So What Happens Now?
by Dreamingsinger
Summary: Sequel to 'So Why'd You Really Do it' The war is over. Cybertron is rebuilding. But what happens now? Refugee younglings, born on ships that sailed the stars see a world they never dared to hope for. Defectors from a brutal cause, they now question, struggle just to start over amid a new society's judgement. And Autobots struggle just be 'ordinary.'
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer/ Once again I don't own Transformers or its characters. Hasbro does and that's fine by me. A few OCs are mine, as is this plot, but that's about it. I'm doing this for fun. Not profits.**

 **Notes/ Well here it is then... the start of my promised second part of a story that became surprisingly successful. I have no idea how long this is going to be yet. And this time I'm not even going to guess. Because this is indeed a sequel to a fanfction I've already done, I can't say I'm fully confidant that this one will make complete sense to anyone that hasn't read the first part 'So Why'd you Really Do It.'**

 **This one is going to be a bit different from part one, in that the span of time will be loooong, as you'll see... vaguely covering decades or even a century instead of just a few short years. And because the war is over, obviously, the focus here will be the rebuilding of Cybertron and more importantly a new society, plus a greater focus on the situation involving returning refugees and few surprises. As well as Soundwave's ongoing story this time, among those of others.**

 **At any rate... Onward! And as always I look forward to reviews and most of all, feedback and suggestions**

 _Five years Post-War_

"How's ya'vision?" Firestorm asked, looking up from her place, sitting curled up comfortably on Soundwave's lap while he sat on a bench. Laserbeak sat perched on the small bot's bent arm, and chirped a little in startled displeasure when Firestorm jostled her while trying to look up for a second.

"I..." Soundwave said slowly. And for a second he said nothing more. Eventually though he moved to detach the cover from the front of his face-plate. And he sat blinking a moment. "I can see you... not well at all. But I see hints of your colours... the shape of your frame, and Laserbeak."

"One'more repair fa your'optics 'n two fa'ya face-plate," Firestorm said, reminding him and smiling with her positivity about it all. "Least ah'tink that's wa'Ratchet said he'figures the plan'll be."

"Yes," Soundwave said, quietly. He stared down toward the ground then, and Firestorm stopped him gently with a tap of her hand against the back of his, when he tried quickly to put the covering back over his face-plate just as face just as quickly as he had taken it off to look at the world through his own optics.

It was a tricky thing, and they both knew it. He needed to see the world as anyone else could see it. He needed to look through his own optics unobscured by the darkness of the cover, and without the complicated system of cameras and software, if he was ever going to really learn to see again (and indeed it was in part a process of relearning once the repairs were done.) But though he had never been able to actually see his own face-plate after it was destroyed in the first place, Firestorm knew full well that surely he was aware enough of just how terrible the damage had actually been. He may not have known what he looked like – not exactly – but he knew full well it was bad. She understood without him ever telling her, that on so many levels, he just felt safer behind that obscure cover of his. And it didn't help him in the least that he was still edgy in recovering from his first of the operations on his optics only the day before, and they were very close to downtown.

Firestorm wanted to tell him with great insistence, that no one cared what he actually looked like at all, or that no one would even bother to notice him. But she knew she'd be lying, and she just couldn't lie to him. Bots stared at her all the time, whenever she ventured out pushing her little walking frame. And they so often laughed and looked startled whenever she started to speak. She seldom cared. But Soundwave so clearly did. Ratchet would have pushed him harder then to push himself more. But she never could, at least not any more than the tiny bit she did. Smiling up at him then, sure he was still nowhere close to seeing anything as detailed as a smile on a face-plate, she let his hand go again and he promptly replaced the cover over his face.

"Do'ya still love'me?" Firestorm asked, still looking up at him a moment more, before she rested her head against his chest panel. Her blue optics were big and begging playfully, and she heard him laugh.

It was late into the evening and the city was quieting down by now. But a bot sat on another bench close enough to theirs, while he read a datapad. And behind them, in an empty space between two closed shops, a trio of young bots around Firestrom's age goofed around with a heavy ball they were tossing around, while they talked about some office jobs. Firestorm was more than aware of them all, and aware that at least half were staring while pretending not to be. But she chose to ignore it completely.

"Yes," Soundwave answered, still laughing, because he'd come to love her more than anyone, and he knew she knew it. When she hugged him, he quickly hugged her back, and when she didn't immediately let go he didn't either. Aside from Laserbeak of coruse, Firestorm was the only bot that he not only didn't try to stop from touching his frame in any way, but that he actively liked letting her do so.

"I'can hear ya' sparkbeat..." Firestorm mumbled, using both of her constantly shaking hands to hold one of his larger ones.

They were a strange pair, who looked strange to the world, and both of them know it. She, a tiny framed young bot, mistaken at times for a youngling, with shaking hands and stumbling steps. And he, a bot, through reputation and name alone, a bot that few dared to even speak to. She'd curl up on his lap, and his long strong though lanky arms and electrified cables would almost hide her from sight. But those were the moments that she felt the safest in the world.

"Ya' spark'is beatin' bit fass..." Firestorm mumbled, expressing slight worry without raising her head again. Finally she did move, so that she could lightly run her her free hand over one of his arms slowly. "Ah Feel... ya tension. Nerves... You okay?"

"Medical repair procedures – still horribly terrifying." Soundwave's answer was slow and hesitant. And in his nervousness and obvious embarrassment, he had reverted into shorthand speech again. He could not have failed to notice those half busy and half staring bots any more then she had. Soundwave noticed everything, even when no one else did. Firestorm laughed silently in pride at him for ignoring them, as she did.

"Ah can'tell," Firestorm admitted. She did her best to look him in the optics, without knowing exactly where his optics were, behind the face-shield. "Yes'ta'day... before ya power'down, you look'd like you'd cry. It made'me sad."

"I... wish I was different. Not this way... not afraid and nervous at..." Soundwave stopped speaking suddenly, letting his words and his thoughts die in the air when he could not work out how to say anything he wanted to say as he wanted to say it. And Firestorm just looked at him a moment, sad but understanding.

"Ya'cant be'da first bot'ta be'fraid of medical stuff," she said smiling assurance again. "Doubt 'ya be da'last. We'll make it'work, if ya want'ta go on with'repairs. Ah think ya do wanna..."

She shifted again in his lap and finally she wiggled off so that she could instead sit beside him. Laserbeak, who had come to rather like her, remained sitting perched on the little bot's arm. And clearly she enjoyed the head rubbing she received from her. Raising her wings in approval and finally chirping and chittering loudly, asking for more.

"Is'tonight da night you'll say I'll be'your bondmate, then?" Firestorm asked slowly. She'd asked before, but it was been months since the last time she had.

"Firestorm..." Soundwave's spark dropped a little, sensing her sadness the second he said her name. He felt his own sadness and he shoved it aside. "You know we can't..."

"Tha s'okay..." Firestrom mumbled, smiling through her sadness and meaning it.

Still holding the bird on one arm, she moved to climb back into Soundwave's lap, where she wanted to be most and he so clearly wanted her to be. And she'd just began to move, when the blast happened out of nowhere. The ground shook around them and the blue glowing heat of an energon fire flared in front of where they sat. Firestorm heard the scream of shock and horror before she realized it was herself that had screamed. And right beside her came the sound of Laserbeak's panicked clicking squawks. There were other sounds too, running feet, shouting voices overlapping to the left and right, the roar of the explotion... She felt motion, flying through nothingness, tumbling. And there was an impact. Her frame exploded with pain, and heat that quickly brought more pain. Her visuals spin badly around her, and it was clouding over. She felt arms and hands grabbing at her hard... heard the squeal of a siren...

* * *

The medbay doors slid open. The old medic turned quickly, prepared as ever for any manner of unannounced emergency. But instead, and to his relief, Knockout entered the large room instead carrying his smiling daughter. The red bot still rode on his all too familiar mobility cart. But his physical accomplishments were now almost daily, and to Ratchet most were unmistakable. And in just the short time he had been away with his family on their first little vacation, he'd so clearly made still sightly more progress.

"Ratchet!" Cybershock cried, happily. And she jumped down in one quick and almost dangerous motion from her creator's lap and onto the floor, before she just as quickly ran across it.

"Hey," Ratchet exclaimed right back, grinning at the youngling. He scooped her up from the floor, catching her in the middle of a running step, right before she should crash right into him. "Did you get lots of sunshine?"

""No," Cybershock answered, matter of fact and smiling. "No good for my finish." The youngling nodded in her creator's direction and grinned at him next. "Daddy says so, and he knows... everrrrrrrrrrrrry-ting!"

"Well, I wouldn't say I know everything exactly," Knockout laughed in his small daughter's direction. And he smiled at her, with an amused shake of his head.

"You know lots though," Cybershock countered. She turned slightly in the old medic's arms to look from one bot to the other and back again. "Ratchet does too. And Mama... and..."

"We know things because we never stop learning," Knockout answered, still smiling as he rolled his cart quickly over to sit much closer. His left hand tugged lightly, playfully on his younging's little foot as it dangled below where she sat happily, still held by Ratchet. And with his right, he reached up higher, gently tapping her with one finger against front of her face-plate. Immediately that caused her to giggle. "And you, little miss bot... should never stop learning either."

"No!" Cybershook shook her head firmly, agreeing.

"It would seem I couldn't stay away from work even one more day," Knockout laughed, shaking his his head a little. "I need a few files and my appointment book from my office, so I might actually might have some idea what I'm doing when I come to work tomorrow." He nodded vaguely toward the small office that had become his own in the past year, converted from a small unused store room at the very back of the medbay.

"Ratchet!" Arcee exclaimed, hurrying into the medbay herself in the next moment. And to Ratchet's great surprise and dismay, she hurried over and hugged him for a second, before just as quickly letting him go.

"Welcome back," the old bot answered. He resisted the urge to shake his head over the random hug from a bot who was far from known in general as one who usual enjoyed giving hugs.

"Well, Earth base is still very much standing," Arcee said of her very recent trip, and casually making conversation. And Ratchet listened, interested for many long moments as his teammate filled him in on tidbits from the trip, both hers and Bumblebee's little families had just taken together and returned from. The ground bridge it seemed still worked as well as ever. They'd all fianlly seen the ocean, and the youngling's had played in the sand on a hidden beach where no roads led and no boats wanted to dock against the jagged cliffs. There had been a short reunion with the young humans, the younger of them a very young adult now, and 'Bee, Arcee and Speedbreaker, had raced across death valley, while Knockout laughed and cheered his own mate on, and he goofed off with their collective younglings...

"I must say I'm glad to see you back," Ratchet mused, laughing again and speaking mostly to knowout isn his current statement.. "Both you and 'Bee. Don't get me wrong. A little holiday is good for any family. And probably much better with another young family to share one with. But to be deprived of both my consultant _and_ my top medical student at once..." Indeed it was true. He would never have let both of them go if not for the part time staff, and a few newer students to help him.

Turning just a little back in the direction of the door, Ratchet spotted a large blue ball, intended for use as a physiotherapy tool, sitting in it's place on a shelf close to where he stood. And with a silent chuckle at the good idea this suddenly gave him, he winked once at Cybershock and still holding her with one arm, he grabbed for the ball with his free hand.

"Catch!" he said suddenly with a quick under hand toss of the ball right in Knockout's direction.

Knockout had been able to not only catch an object, but also to throw one back for a while already. But still he never had seemed to stop almost grinning whenever he did either. And this time, when the ball was thrown, though he'd certain not been expecting it, both of his hands came quickly out in front of him, and he turned his upper body slightly on the cart, so that he could catch it perfectly. More impressive still, he used only his left hand to promptly toss it back lightly.

"I'm impressed as ever with your level of improvement in function," Ratchet commented, nodding approval, as he put Cybershock down to stand next to him on the floor.

Cybershock had watched her creator in rehab work since she'd been born. And she'd learned only to cheer his successes and laugh along with him whenever he laughed, because really it was as much of a game to them both as it was entirely serious at the same time. And sure enough, in response to this unplanned impromptu little session she'd almost immediately went to simply watching, curious at first to see what he could do. Then, as he threw and caught, and threw again, she began to hop up and down excited and cheering lightly.

"Let's let you practice this with him," Ratchet said after another moment.

And gently he placed the ball - light enough for her to easily hold it, but still almost too big for her to do so - into both of the youngling's little hands. Nearby, Arcee laughed and smiled.

"Daddy, catch!" Cybershock cried, excited as she tossed the ball to him herself. And when he managed to catch her somewhat awkward and certainly low toss, and to throw it back gently, she caught it. But she stumbled back in doing so, bumping into Ratchet's legs, as he stood behind her. And all four of them laughed.

"Being away and on vacation, has done nothing at all to hinder your progress," Ratchet commented to Knockout, impressed and chuckling a little as he watched him go right on with what was mostly a simple game to his daughter.

"I may have been away on holidays, yes," Knockout answered seriously. "But that hardly means I stopped moving, practising just as many skills as I could for even a day..."

"I much appreciate your continued motivation." Ratchet chuckled as he made that comment. But still he meant it too. It had been a couple of years by then since Knockout's second malfunction and his unexpected survival, when still everything in the old bot's understanding of known medical experience said he shouldn't have. And the unexpected physical improvements that survival had brought with it, had certainly seemed to keep him more motivated then ever.

"Finally stopping at one point, after I'd learned to get on and off this machine on my own... it made sense then because that really was the final foreseeable goal," Knockout mused, tossing the ball lightly to his child, who caught it laughing, and stumbled back again. "Still, those months after that, looking back now it was honestly a little hard to except that I was just done rehab. It felt a bit like quitting, even if I had gone as far as I ever could have then. I have something big to work for now."

"On the subject of bigger goals..." Ratchet mused. He held his hands out, wordlessly telling the youngling to toss the ball back to him, and she quickly did so that he could put it away.

"I think we can try something here," he said. And quickly he walked toward the closest recharge station in the empty medbay, with Knockout following him with obvious hesitation, on his cart, holding his youngling's left hand with his right, as she trotted along happily beside him.

Ratchet easily pulled up the railing mounted to the side of the empty recharge station, and pulled hard against it to be certain it would safely hold weight. Turning around again to look back in Knockout's direction, he clearly saw the mix of understanding, and doubt, determination and anxiety on his face-plate.

"Cybershock, don't you dare laugh at me if we mess this up," Knockout said, his serious tone negated only slightly by the smile he gave the youngling as he spoke.

"Okay," Cybershock answered simply. And she promptly sat down in the middle of the floor nearby and out of the way, curious to see what would happen.

Kneeling on the floor a moment, Ratchet carefully pulled each one of Knockout's feet gently off the cart's footrest and saw that both sat firmly flat on the floor in front. Then he stood up and waited for his teammate to reach out in front of him, with some help from his bond mate, and however hesitantly with both hands and grab hold of the safety railing. They had tried this before, twice in the past year or so. The first time had ended in failure entirely, and the second time unfortunately had resulted in a significant fall. And this had been quite recent. That may have been the worst of the falls Knockout had ever taken in his rehab work – he almost certainly would have banged his head off the floor underneath the recharge station, if Ratchet had not been so quick – but it was far from his only one. And he never was one to let the simple thought of falling be the thing that would ever have stopped him trying.

Barely giving Ratchet enough time to place his hands lightly around his upper body in order to help him, Knockout pulled himself slowly into something close to a decent standing position. He leaned forward, holding tighter to the railing to hold himself up and clearly he could never have let go and stayed standing just yet. But still, he was on his feet! And though his standing balance was still off just enough to matter, and his body could not quite hold his weight unsupported, he stood just a moment like that, grinning at his success, before he grinned more so at his youngling.

"Yay!" Cybershock cheered, standing up from her place on the floor in one single fast motion. And she ran over in five quick steps as soon as Ratchet and Arcee, both concerned for another possible fall, assisted Knockout in sitting back on his cart again.

"You'll walk soon, Daddy," the youngling said. And the way she said it was a clear mix of questioning and assurance at the same time.

"I have little doubt he will," Ratchet said, answering the child himself. He bent forward so that he could look her in the optics, and he smiled at her. "And you, you get to help him the most by being his greatest little cheering section."

"I can do that!" Cybershock exclaimed, nodding once in firm agreement. Of course she could. She always had. And Ratchet smiled proudly at her then for that.

"Ratchet?" Another voice called out, as the medbay doors slid quickly open and then closed again. And a second later Speedbreaker walked in with her child, Hotwire, in her arms, and Bumblebee right beside her. The little family were all smiles and laughter.

"Welcome back," Ratchet called in response. And of course he reached out once, trying his hardest and bound and determined to pick up Hotwire and hold him a while like he had Cybershock.

But younglings were all so different from each other. And for all of the outgoing friendliness of Arcee and Knockout's youngling, Bumblebee and Speedbreaker's little Hotwire was as shy and standoffish as they came. The short time the family had been away had been almost enough to make him forget the old bot altogether it seemed. And just as soon as Ratchet reached out to take him from his carrier, the little bot put his head down on Speedy's shoulder panel and held her arm.

Cybershock however, was Hotwire's idea of a best friend. And certainly his favourite little playmate. Speedy set Hotwire down on his feet on the floor, when Cybershock ran over to them. And instantly the pair of younglings were standing face-plate to face-plate in the middle of the medbay floor, conversing in their best of language of young children. And Ratchet chuckled a moment simply watching them , listening in as they compared notes with each other on the favoured highlights of their collective vacation. He was in fact soon so well amused by just listening to the children, that he was startled to nearly jumping when his comlink buzzed unexpectedly.

 _'Autobot medical. This is civilian city patrol unit three'_ A voice said urgently over the comm, behind feedback and noise.

 _'Go ahead patrol unit three,'_ Ratchet answered at once. And instantly he was ready for anything.

 _'I've got a trooper headed your way with a refugee in need of medical attention at once. Young bot. Possible critical. Still conscious... obvious injury I'm sure you don't see everyday..."_

"We're assuming then you guys are going right back to work tonight," Arcee said, mostly addressing her own bondmate, though glancing in 'Bee's direction too, after she'd stood awhile exchanging looks with Speedy as they'd all listened to whatever had come over the comm.

"Yep," Knockout answered quickly, with his mind made up at once. But he gave her a regretful look as he did, And shook his head just a little. "I'm sorry about this. We never know when emergencies will happen..."

"Hey, duty calls," Arcee said, smiling her understanding as she picked up her youngling to take her home. "Just... be safe, and I'll see you at home as soon as you get back."

And close by, Speedy and 'Bee shared a similar exchange of true understanding as Speedy picked up her own child. Both of the younglings waved at their creators, as they left for their homes with their chatting carriers, who discussed the possibility of a stop at the playground. Both Cybershock and Hotwire were quick to squeal their delighted agreement at that light sparked proposal.

Not more than a few minutes after Speedy and Arcee and Speedbreaker had gone, And before anyone was even finished readying the medbay for any real emergency at all, the doors slid open once again.

"Miss! Miss, you need to calm down," said a civilian member of the city patrol, to the screaming and energon covered bot he was carrying in his arms when he ran into the medbay. The doors slid shut behind him hjust as fast as they had opened. "I know it's scary, but you're only going to make it worse by panicking."

"What the frag happened?" Ratchet demanded of the patrol bot, gesturing with one waving hand toward a repair table closest to where he stood. And the red and green patroller shook his head in obvious shock, while the injured bot he carried screamed and shrieked in his arms.

"We're not sure yet what this was," the patrol bot explained, wide-optic'd. "A power generator might have blown, downtown. She was right beside it..."

"Firestorm," Ratchet muttered, recognizing her as soon as the patrol bot had set her down. And he resisted a very strong urge to kick a work table across the room.

"Ra... Ratchet... plea... please..." the little bot mumbled shaking. She was going quickly into system shock – covered in enough energon to make it clear she had lost far too much. And a long, bent and twisted metal bar stuck horribly from the front of her frame, right above the level of the midsection.

"Look at me." the old medic demanded firmly. "Firestorm. Optics open. Optics open. Come on!'

"Th... there... th..." Firestorm mumbled horribly. She was worsening fast, and her hands, shaking badly, gestured in panic toward the twisted metal still attached to her own body.

"Okay. It's okay," Ratchet said quickly, assuring her the best he could manage to. "I'm going to fix this soon. I need to see exactly what it it we're dealing with."

"Am... Am'I gonna'die?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it."

Ratchet's hand went immediately to the back of her left wrist, where he knew he would find a small retractable panel, that when pushed back, would let him access the simple switch meant to deactivate her pain receptors. And his spark sunk fast with dread when it was clear a second after he'd done so, that her body had not responded at all to the flipping of the switch. Another negative effect of her long damaged processor? He realized then that he'd not once thought to ask her.

"That metal could easily be right through her fuel tank," Knockout muttered, from somewhere beside him. And Ratchet turned his head to see his teammate quickly powering up a med scanner.

His insistence that she look at him, his demands to keep her optics open, had done well enough to hold her consciousness and keep the system shock at bay, at least at present. But it meant as well that she was more awake now. And that trade off had it's downside. Firestorm began to scream again with her horrible distress.

"Ratchet... shouldn't we be powering her down?" Bumblebee questioned. He was visibly anxious. And so clearly at a loss for what he could do for Firestorm at that second, he moved to gently pat her hand with one of his in assurance. The look on her face-plate was one of terror and shock. And she gave a terrible shriek of pain, as soon as her body was shifted in the slightest just to scan the damages.

"Remember 'Bee; never throw a patient's systems into power down until we're sure the process won't kill them. We need high dose pain medication for her, and I mean this second. Three hundred milligrams to start, with two hundred ready on standby. Remember, she's a minibot. The dose may seem a bit low, but given her frame size we're going to be slagging close to knocking her out. And that's not always a terrible thing."

"On it!'

"It seems this slagger might need a medic before we toss 'im into the city cells," another voice called from the direction of the medbay doors as they slid open again. And Ratchet, frustrated just as much as he was fully committed, turned quickly toward the door.

His spark dropped at once at seeing four more members of the city patrol, in the doorway. And all four together were managing to keep a far too firm grip on Soundwave. All four patrol bots, it happened, were big. Two could have held Soundwave easily, had he been fighting, which he certainly was not. Far from it in fact. The bot stood, head darting in one direction then another, his panic and desperation obvious even with his face-plate fully hidden as it was. And energon leaked from his upper arm and shoulder panel, from a more than clear and serious injury.

One of the patrol bots shoved him froward hard. And two more of them laughed loudly, when he stumbled, nearly falling, because of it. Soundwave turned his head again to look quickly around the medbay. And one patroller – the one that had shoved him, smacked a hand against the bot's damaged arm hard enough to cause a terrible clanging sound. All four civilian patrol bots laughed when Soundwave only tried to step back, away from the one that had assaulted him.

"Inquiry – Firestorm?" Soundwave said urgently, before two of the bots that held him, terribly now with his arms twisted and his hands behind his back, laughed again. One of them, the largest and strongest of them all, yanked up on Soundwave's restrained wrists, forcing forward onto his knees.

"We found this slag pile beside that injured little femme patient you've got," another of the four explained. "The coward wouldn't even speak when we asked him what he was doing around there." The hate was clear in his voice, and it was clear it was him that had spoken before. With a snarl of his anger, he kicked Soundwave square in the chest panel, while the shaken, damaged bot stayed kneeling, helpless on the medbay floor.

"Hey!" Ratchet hollered. His head shook with his disbelief at the patrol bots' behaviour. Young refugee neutrals, out to settle scores he reasoned quickly, with situations they did not so much as try to understand. "Let go of him!"

"Frag no. Not a chance!" Another patrol bot spoke up. And he kicked Soundwave next as he did. "He's dangerous and under arrest. We don't let go of him until you're ready to deal with him. And when you do, I recommend some good restraints."

"I said let go of him!" Ratchet yelled over the next wave of the bullying patrolers' laughter. "For Primus' sake. This is a hospital!"

He did not dare leave Firestorm for even a second. But his aim had never failed him in centuries when he tried hard enough. Within a second his trusty wrench was out of his storage compartment and his in right hand. A second later, he'd managed to fling it from his hand, across the room and send it crashing hard against the head of the largest of the brutes. The group of them scattered after that.

"'Bee," Ratchet ordered quickly, his attention almost entirely back on his initial patient again. "Take Soundwave to a repair station and assess him. Begin treatment if possible. I can see from here he could be serious..."

"Fault – not my own." Soundwave said, as soon as Bumblebee had grabbed him gently by the arm to lead him away. His speech had reverted again into his familiar shorthand. But his voice shook with his own obvious shock and horror.

"Myself and Firestorm..." he spoke again and it was too clear just how hard he tried just to form a sentence now and to make it make sense. "We were simply conversing on a bench..."

"We aren't blaming you, Soundwave," Ratchet said quickly. He worked at the same time to assess the condition of Firestorm. But she was less than perfectly compliant now, as he struggled to make her follow simple directions to wiggle feet and squeeze fingers, to follow his light and tell him if it was day or nighttime. She cried loudly in her fear and pain, while trying hard to shave his hands away before he could touch her, clearly fearing instinctively that he would only hurt her worse. "I know you had nothing to do with this."

"Please," Soundwave begged, his head turned in 'Bee's direction now as the young Autobot tried to lead him away toward the back of the medbay. "Let me see Firestorm... I can help..."

Ratchet was about to snap at the stubborn bot. But something made him stop. And slowly he shook his head in frustration, and motioned instead in the direction of the repair station was was working at.

"Fine," He muttered under his intakes. "But you get seen as soon as she's stabilized."

"Sound... wave...?" Firestorm mumbled, as soon as he'd managed to run over from across the medbay. With her optics half closed and clearly unfocused, she raised an arm, hand in a tight fist, and moved to punch Ratchet across his upper arm when he reached over her body. Knockout grabbed for her swinging hand the best he could manage to, saving Ratchet from a hit, however light it would likely have been. But in the process she managed to hit him instead. The Medi-bots exchanged looks of sad understanding at once. She hadn't meant to hit him and they both knew it. She was just too panicked and scared to reason, and it would have been anyone.

"Firestorm – Stop," Soundwave said, far more firmly than anyone might have expected him to speak, given his own shakiness. And from most other bots it might almost have sounded spark-less given her state. But his tone of voice was not entirely without compassion, and clearly somehow it worked. Because Firestrom stopped her combative struggling at least a fair bit, and she stared up at him blinking tear filled optics. He held out a hand – the one not attached to his significantly injured upper arm, and she reached to grab it in both of hers at once. She still cried so hard it was speak-breaking, even to a medic who'd worked as long as Ratchet had. But with both of her hands holding tightly to another bot's, there was no danger of her hitting anyone in panic anymore.

"Wha'happen'?" Firestorm questioned, in confusion, managing to speak sensibly. "We'were sittin' talkin.' And..."

"Event – currently unclear." Soundwave's reply was simple and formal again. But no bot that heard him then could have denied that they'd heard the spark-break in his voice as he tried to explain.

"Oww..." Firestorm mumbled horribly, while shaking badly, the very second Ratchet lightly touched the far edges of a crack across the front of her body armor, which spread away from the gash caused by the metal bar. Coolant filled her optics again, and one of her hands let go of Soundwave's in an obviously unconscious threat to deck the medic again.

"Okay, okay..." Ratchet said quietly. He grabbed her flying hand easily, brushing off the near hit at once. "We're not going to do anything like that just yet then." He turned quickly in his young student's direction. "'Bee, do you have that stand by dose I asked for?"

"Ready and waiting."

"Thank you. Give it to her now."

"There were... other bots in near proximity to us," Soundwave said suddenly, in a tone that showed for certain that he remembered that fact only then. He tilted his head for just a second in the direction of the members of the medical team, before turning right back to Firestorm.

"We may have at least a couple more patients rolling in still then," Knockout reasoned. His tone was practical. And he turned partway on his cart, scanning the medbay, and clearly working out where to best place a possible next arrival.

"Rollin' in?" Firestorm questioned a second after that. Her optics were open wider as she, quite oddly and randomly, tried to join the conversation herself. Her face-plate showed a baffled kind of confusion for a second, and she went on slowly, "why'd en'one be rollin' inside..." A second after that, she burst out laughing loudly, just as though the very idea of something she'd taken for too literally, was the funniest of ideas.

"Firestorm – alright?" Soundwave questioned at once. His concern was unmistakable. But Ratchet only chuckled a little under his intakes, despite the still pressing seriousness of the situation.

"She's good," Ratchet answered quickly. "Just loopy as a scraplet from the pain medication..." His initial fast-made guess that said medication would knock her unconscious almost entirely had been, he saw now, just slightly off. But no matter, he reasoned just as fast. The effect was certainly not dangerous. And a patient laughing her aft off was always preferable to one screaming and crying with distress.

"Look'a'tha... paint!" Firestorm exclaimed, smiling with out of place amusement, while she just continued laughing. Part of the bar – a bright shinning silverish in colour – had swapped a little paint with that of her own frame. And managing to lift her head just a little, so that she could look at her own front panelling, she seemed to be laughing with unmistakable amusement over the streaks of colour on the front of her body.

"Ah'should choose'new colour one'day," she chattered on laughingly, laying flat on the repair table again with no prompting at all. And she only continued to laugh loudly as Ratchet finally managed to fully inspect that shattered section of her front panel and the unwanted metal that ran clean through to armour to somewhere underneath. He chuckled along with her, as he worked, if only to further encourage her ridiculous laughing because it clearly served to distract her. And she laughed a moment wordlessly before she want back to chattering on again. "I'could'beee purple! Ooooorrrrrr... blue'an'green!"

"Well, it's managed to just miss her fuel tank," Ratchet mumbled, as he held his focus on his work almost entirely. "And since we've seen that she can move her feet just fine, we can be pretty sure it hasn't damaged the main central relay close to that."

"So..." Bumblebee was nervous again as he questioned slowly. "What do we do now?"

"We grab this piece of metal and pull straight upward," Ratchet explained, decided at once. "It's a fair bit shorter, according to the scans, than we initially feared it would be..."

"You're not going to power her down?" 'Bee asked, more nervous now then before.

A forced medical power down to any bot did hold its own risk, however slight in general. And in a bot with processor damage of any kind, as was the case with Firestorm, there was slightly more risk to consider still. And he explained this to his young student quickly.

"I don't think we need to," he went on.

He could certainly power the little bot down safely, if he had to. And if he'd had to do it, he would have at once. Yes there were the risks involved, but if those were outweighed by benefits, any risk would be a more than fair one. But Ratchet never had believed in using full power down even half as much as so many medics of days gone by, it seemed, preferred to do. Sometimes, he felt, there were just faster, better, and certainly safer ways of doing things.

"Soundwave," he said quickly, and having decided at once exactly what to do. "Here's where you can really be some help. We're going to move her arms so they sit nicely over her chest panel and out of the way. Then you're going to hold them that way for me. I need you to keep on talking to her too. I know conversation is hardly your strong point, but I'm sure you'll think of something to talk about. She's so drugged now from the meds, she might just keep on laughing at anything you say."

"Wh... what...?" Firestorm asked urgently when her arms and hands, which had been waving carelessly beside her, while she laughed and chattered for the last while, where moved. She had been still laughing over paint colours like it was the funniest thing in the world. But suddenly she stopped, as her optics opened wider and her face-plate turned serious. Ratchet felt his own tank drop a little, realizing just how much she could still understand when he'd assumed she wouldn't have been bothered to pay attention.

"You're okay," Ratchet assured her quickly, and he looked up again. "Soundwave your hands over both of her lower arms. Just like that. Thank you."

"No'no no... let'go me," Firestorm said, forcibly snapping herself right out of her state of dazed out happiness And her optics instead filled with panic again. Soundwave, of course was not holding her arms all that hard. And quickly she had struggled out of his hold on her. "Ah'dun wan'ta."

Exchanging quick looks with both 'Bee and Knockout, Ratchet wondered a second if perhaps he would be better to power her down after all.

"Firestorm – courageous little bot," Soundwave said slowly, and in that it was obvious he was trying his hardest to calm her, as he gently grabbed her arms again, holding them still again just as he'd been instructed, This time she let him hold her like that with no fuss at all, and she even smiled, a silly little grin, as her panic eased back again after that one short bout.

"Firestorm," Knockout said, speaking quickly, when Soundwave, so clearly at a complete loss for anything to say on the spot, just stood silently holding her arms still.

"Was'up?" Firestorm mumbled still smiling. Her optics travelled slowly between both Soundwave and Knockout now.

"You think I should consider a new paint colour one day too?" Knockout asked. And at that, Firestorm burst into laughter yet again.

"Def'nan'ly blue!" she said, loudly. Her amusement more than obvious at once. And for a fraction of a second she looked thoughtful, before she went on speaking. "Ya'cood'do green but... noooo. Blue'more ya'colour. Soundwave, wha'da you'tink?"

Ratchet managed a quick second in which to look up from his work to nod his approval at his teammate. And he even chuckled again just a little himself, at the silliness of his patient, because while her state was growing quickly even more altered as the medications took their full effect, it was still certainly not dangerous in the least. His expression quickly turned serious again however,and focused at once back on his work, he grabbed hold of the metal bar. And just as he'd explained he'd planned to do, he quickly pulled up on it yanking firmly, as quick as he could until it slid easily out of the little bot's body armour. Standing close by, watching and ready to help, Bumblebee visibly cringed. But he took the bent metal as soon as it was handed off to him, and quickly he stashed it away, well away from Firestorm's field of vision.

Reaching for his welder on a table behind him in one fast move, and powering it up at once, Ratchet looked back at his patient again, ever vigilant and assessing. Her arms were still held firmly by Soundwave, and at some point she'd moved so that she could hold tight to his lower arm. Her optics had opened wider too, in shock and some all too obvious pain. But this was, it seemed, all but entirely unconscious to her, because right through her all too clear panic, she still smiled at the bots that were easily distracting her. And she started to giggle over something no longer clear in the slightest, as Ratchet set about welding.

* * *

"You wanna talk about it?" Bulkhead asked quickly, during one tiny break in the midst of a flurry of punches and kicks. He raised his hands to block again, as a hit landed hard against his chest panel, and turned to his left, far too slow in his big and bulky frame, to block the flying kick that hit him straight in the shoulder panel. And during the next all too brief break in the combat, he bent to turn down the music, blasting away over his player, just off the edge of the rubber training mat.

"Reason for conversation – nonexistent," Soundwave answered quickly, before he landed three more kicks successfully. And it was only after the fact that he feared that his reply may just have been too quick, to deny anything in a way that was truly convincing

"I'm not so sure about that," Bulk' replied. He managed, just barely, well enough, to grab Soundwave's lower leg in the middle of his next fast kick. And with a turn of his arm, and throwing his own weight forward, he dropped the bot face first to the rubber mat they stood on. Soundwave fell almost awkwardly, onto a shoulder that had been injured and repaired just the night before. But Soundwave had fought so far just fine, and even in the hard fall, he barely noticed more than a slight hint of the pain it caused.

"Inquiry – why the certainty?" Soundwave questioned, slowly rolling onto his back before sitting up on the mat. Emotions in one's voice, or at least in his own, were vulnerability and weakness, he reminded himself fast and fought to hide the anger in his tone. But he could not quite manage to do it completely.

"Because you're fighting like you've forgotten the war is over, and we're sort of friends now instead of mortal enemies." Bulkhead shook his head and laughed a little as he added – obviously meaning to be funny in his exaggeration, "I'm starting to worry about you tearing my head off."

"Firestorm – sustained severe damage last night." Soundwave said quietly, giving the other bot that much because that much was harmless. He quickly got to his feet, and the two began to spar again, though this time he was more careful about going too far.

"So I've heard," Bulk' answered with a sad shake of his head. He blocked a blow and gave one right back. This time it was he that hit almost too hard, and his own anger at the situation with still few known details, was more than clear in that. But the Autobot's anger faded again quickly, and he looked at Soundwave while they trained, with a look of... assurance? "Ratchet says she's doing well this morning. He was laughing by the energon dispenser, about how she's already asking him to let her get up to walk with her frame in the courtyard. 'Bee said he showed her the metal bar this morning because she'd been asking him about it. He said her most pressing question after that was 'can I keep it?'" Bulk' chuckled at that and slowly shook his head.

"The civilian police assume I'm in some way at fault," Soundwave said. He deferred from his shorthand speech again, only by forcing himself to do so. And his hands began to shake with humiliation and fast growing rage. "They kicked me when I fell, just like a common slave. I'd be in the city jail now had Ratchet not stepped in..."

"We'll straighten all this out."

"The last thing I said to Firestorm, before everything happened... she could never be my bondmate..."

"I think that's what's eating you up," Bulkhead said, with a shrug of big shoulders. He may have certainly been a lunkhead much of the time – or at least he so often seemed it. But still, he was thoughtful and observant, and Soundwave knew for years that he could relate to most anybot somehow.

"It is," Soundwave answered, with barely a thought. He stopped fighting and came to stand still in the middle of the Autobot training gym, just looking at the floor. "It fills me with such regret that I broke her little spark yet again, and still when she was damaged and scared and crying in pain, the bot she wanted most was me... And seeing her in such condition, with the possibly over my head at the time that she could actually die, no one knowing for certain yet that she looked probably far worse than she was, I wondered if I'd really meant what I'd said."

Bulkhead shrugged again, and bent down idly to skip the current track on his music player, over to the next one. "Did you really mean it?

"I couldn't even make her laugh," Soundwave said quietly. And his shame welled up in his spark, making it feel as though it would drop into his tank, in seconds "I... I wish I didn't have to mean it."

"She doesn't need you to be the bot who makes her laugh," Bulk' said, seemingly still so determined to be helpful. "That's... not exactly your thing as a rule. She only needs you to be.. you."

"Firestorm is beautiful and thoughtful. Ambitious, unstoppable, and... perfect. And I..." Soundwave tried hard then to finish exactly what it was he'd started to say. But once again he simply couldn't. So many thoughts swirled through his processor, and so very many words come to mind, that might have explained at least most of those thoughts. But there was too much of everything all at once, and he could not manage to put the words to vague concepts.

Who was he, to love the little bot they spoke of, he questioned in his head. She, all of the things he'd managed already to explain out loud. And he, a bot born only to be a slave. A slave to his creator's viciousness, to the pits of Koan... to Megatron and the misguided Decepticon hope for a world of 'perfect equality.' Soundwave had never planned to love anyone at all. He'd thought for as long as he knew, that he'd never want to at any rate. And the very idea of some bot loving him had barely ever occurred to him in passing. He was socially all but unreachable and he understood that well. But tenacious little Firestorm had managed to reach him when he didn't even know anymore that he wanted to be reached, and she found him somehow when he'd tried harder than ever to fade into the background and disappear from view.

"We've got a brand new world now," Bulkhead said. And it was obvious that from just the little bit that Soundwave had spoken out loud, he'd gotten the basic idea of it all. "We get to start over. Get life right this time around. You could do the very same, you know..."

Bulk' wandered toward his favoured punching bag, hanging nearby. And immediately he began to work out with it. Soundwave stood a moment just watching the big brute of a bot, as he sent the bag flying back and forth fast with his hard steady hits. And finally he joined in himself, kicking the bag from the opposite direction, And even managing some good fast spins, all without losing his balance, though thrown off just slightly by a still injured arm.

"So," Bulkhead said, after a few long moments in which they both just punched and kicks without any conversation. And he went right on with his training. "What exactly happened downtown yesterday anyway?" He paused a second and his face-plate turned slightly concerned in his obvious understanding. "No one on this team believes you had anything to do with this."

"Details – still unclear," Soundwave answered slowly. It was a hard thing to admit, considering his reputation for meticulous attention to detail. But everything had happened so incredibly fast.

"Any details you might have could be useful," Bulk' said calmly. "The Autobot forces are gonna wanna get to the bottom of this mess... I've been voted bot in charge of figuring it out." He shrugged a little and shook his head again. "Not sure why the team would choose me. I never saw myself as the investigator type."

"Firestorm and I were seated together on a bench simply conversing," Soundwave explained slowly, thinking intently as he did so, and trying hard to remember anything that might possibly have mattered. "Laserbeak was free and perched on Firestorm. Four bots nearby went about their business while staring at us." Remembering was easier once his processor had began to put it all together. But putting it all into words was much harder. He struggled just to explain it all, but still he tried his hardest to do so, and well aware that at least a bit of what he relayed was irreverent entirely. "To Firestorm's left side was an energy distribution box, and to her right was me. The distribution box was painted red. There was a blast. It happened, it seemed out of nowhere. A bright blue flash that started from across the street and somewhere above, and the distribution box exploded. Every light went out on the entire block..."

"I... uh... guess I better take notes quick when I get back upstairs," Bulkhead mumbled thoughtfully. And it was obvious just how out of place he must have felt in his current role of case invesigator.

"Music – most interesting," Soundwave said, changing the subject entirely, and simply because he thought it indeed was.

"It's some Earth metal stuff from Miko," Bulk answered, with a shrug of his huge shoulders. "The song is 'Trash the City, and never knew the name of the band. We just call it 'track seven.'"

"Song – appeals in it's surprising complexity," Soundwave continued. And to his dismay he saw bulkhead blink his optics at him with surprise he did not even bother to hide.

"I wouldn't'a take you for a bot to appreciate such music, or maybe any music at all," he mumbled, shrugging again.

"Does everybot not?" Soundwave answered, simply. And he would never know they nievity of his simple question.

* * *

"That's a Dodge Charger," Knockout said. The enthusiasm was unmistakable in the sound of his voice. "And that one? Hmm... let me see that a second. BMW M6. 1968 Chevy Camero. Classic."

"That don't look much wike Bumblebee's vee'cle mode at all," Cybershock answered quickly, in a tone of clear and obvious doubt. "And we know he's a Camero."

"Yes, yes," Knockout explained, laughing without missing a beat from his quick witted youngling. "But he's certainly not a '68!"

On the trip to Earth they had just so recently returned from, Raf had showed cybershock his collection of displayable toy cars that he'd collected for years and packed up into a box to place into storage. And to Cybershock's greatest joy, he'd gifted the little collection to her one day before she was brought back home to Cybertron. He'd outgrown his toys years before, he explained, smiling. And the youngling so clearly loved the little cars – just as well as her creator for that matter.

And standing inside the frame of the open doors leading out to her family's apartment patio, Arcee smiled, watching her mate and their child interact outside on the little deck, sorting through the miniature Earth vehicles, Knockout sitting in his cart, with Cybershock on his lap, puled up next to the patio table where the little one had set the little box of toy cars they were inspecting.

"What's this one, Daddy?" Cybershock asked. She reached into the box and pulled out the next one out.

It was funny enough to watch Cybershock so carefully handle the small Earth toys in hands still small for Cybertron, but just a bit big for anything Earth-based. And quite another thing entirely to watch knockout try to do it just as well as she could. His hands, of course, were so much bigger. But he held the tiny toys between his fingertips and looked them over anyway.

"That's... an Aston Martin," he said, explaining quickly. And he grinned at his child when she grinned up at him. Clearly thouhg that grin of his hid sudden slight sadness, that Arcee knew at once was making a point of hiding fully from the youngling.

"That one's my favourite one I think," Cybershock answered at once. She grinned brighter when her creator handed the little car back to her. And unknowingly she sat carefully admiring something that was basically a simplified model of his own vehicle mode, though in some odd blue instead of his red. She leaned forward then in his lap, to place the car onto the table, and smiling she pushed it quickly in circles around the little box, making loud 'car' noises.

"My vehicle mode looked kind of like that," Knockout said slowly. And the youngling turned around on his knees to look up at him, wide-optic'd and amazed.

"You had a vee'cle mode too?" she asked.

"I did indeed," Knockout told her, smiling at her own amazement.

Arcee, stepping then out onto the patio herself to join her family, smiled again. She knew how the world judged her bond-mate. How he'd constantly seemed 'broken' or 'defective.' But Cybershock had never known anything different. She knew of course that he was different. And she'd even began to take an interest lately in questioning why. But she made it clear daily that she simply didn't mind that at all.

"We don't have one that wooks wike Mama..." Cybershock said, clearly disappointed, as she gestured toward the tiny toy vehicles in the box.

"We'll need to find you a little toy motorbike for that," Knockout said, smiling again. And he thought a second. "Perhaps one of our human friends can send one..."

"Daddy?" Cybershock asked after a moment. And she carefully placed the little car back into the box, with her little hand paused there in the midst of reaching to pick up the next one. She looked back up at him again, her optics curious. "You'll walk one day... you can a-ready stand up a bit. That mean you'll transform 'gain den?"

"Ideally, yes," Knockout answered grinning by then. And behind him Arcee smiled too.

It was something they'd talked about more and more in the past few years. Daring only to hope for a chance he could indeed drive again, once he'd begun his obvious steady increase in function. But Cybershock had never seen his vehicle mode. Never even knew until he'd mentioned it in passing that that day that he'd ever been able to transform at all. Arcee smiled at imagining she might just get to see that someday.

"Did you ever race?" Cybershock asked quickly. And Arcee watched carefully, worried somehow that Knockout might just be upset by that. But instead she only saw him grin at their youngling.

"Are you kidding?" he asked her, laughing while he pulled her closer against him playfully with his arms, and shook her just a little to make her giggle with her little legs kicking in front of her. "I was an underground champion in Nevada. I brought street racing to Cybertron!"

"Can you teach me ta race?" Cybershock asked quickly. Her little blue optics lit up, widening with her excitement as she bounced in her creator's lap. "When I big 'nough to have my own vee'cle mode, I wanna scan a car on Earth so I can have one wike you and Mama's!"

Arcee stepped closer to her family and finally she sat herself down in her favoured blue patio chair, set up closest to the railing. Cybershock, she knew and feared, was growing up so much faster than she'd ever wanted her to. And now the child still many years aay from a vehicle mode at all, was already daydreaming of hers. The youngling, it was clear more each day, both her carrier's desire to simply go fast and her creator's inborn love of horsepower. Arcee shook her head just slightly, so unsure of exactly how she felt about her own child one day racing. But Knockout, to no great surprise at all, only grinned brighter than ever at her interest.

"I read through Bulkhead's investigation notes today on base,"Arcee said to her mate, after Cybershock had settled comfortably again onto his lap and was sitting quietly pushing a couple of her little toy cars around on the table beside her. And she chuckled a second musing out loud, "Bulk's doing a excellent job with this... even if he does feel his calling in life is simple construction bot."

"Wants a simple life of simple work... can't quite seem to walk away from the old Autobot devotion to duty," Knockout smiled right back at her with an amused shake of his head. "It certainly sounds familiar."

"How so?" Arcee laughed, but the look on her face-plate told him she clearly understood exactly what he meant anyway.

"You. A simple preschool teacher now – through truth be told, I can't say I'll ever see how that's simple in the least. It's obviously challenging work and to be well admired. Still, you spend half as much time working on base, busy as anything, as you did when you actually worked there!"

"A point well taken," Arcee laughed a little.

"Of all the bots on Cybertron," she groaned with a shaking head, not a second later, when a too loud banging thump from the apartment above all but shook their own floor. "Why did the one above us have to be Sideswipe."

The initial bang from up there, was sure enough quickly followed by another, right along with the thudding of high bass music from stereo speakers. And not a moment later, multiple bots were laughing hysterically and shouting far more than talking on and near the patio above their own. The young Autobot, known far more for needlessly judging others and for the oversized chip on his shoulder, than much real work, was well known to throw parties inside his apartment. And sure enough that night he'd clearly made up his mind to throw another.

"They're all just having their fun," Knockout said of the bots partying away upstairs, when another peel of laughter sounded as soon as the music track, more than loud enough to clearly hear, was changed up there.

"It's getting late," Arcee muttered, still disapproving. Knockout, she noted with another shake of her head, always had been far more forgiving of such behaviour than she certainly was. And she nodded toward Cybershock, before glancing out toward the slowly setting sun across the sulphur field. "Little miss here needs to be down for recharge soon."

"I nooo tired yet," Cybershock answered, without missing a beat, and not even looking up as she went right on playing. Somehow she'd gotten the idea that a Kia Rio hatchback could really beat a Ford Mustang GT in a drag race. And she made it happen across the patio table in miniature form with two little silver hands that pushed the tiny cars. But despite her instance, she yawned wide anyway and lowered her head at once to hide it.

"Too bad missy," Arcee answered chuckling, and revealed when Knockout nodded his head in back up. "You'll let you stay out here a few more minutes, then its wash up time and to your recharge station."

"Okay, Mama," Cybershock mumbled. The Kia Rio won again in one more round of racing.

"Bulkhead is quickly coming quickly to the conclusion that this little explosion downtown may well have been a targeted attack," Arcee said, as she watched her youngling snuggle tiredly a short time later on Knockout's lap. He pulled her against him again with one hand and used the other to carefully put away the child's tiny toy cars into the box. Above them there was another horrible thump and the sound of somebot yelling something about dance moves. She chose to ignore it all in her annoyance and went right on speaking though just slightly louder. "That electrical box didn't just blow up. Somebot blew it up... with a long range weapon, from what Soundwave described. "We're still not sure who the refugees actually were that were nearby. Thankfully none were actually hurt and presented for medical attention, but it left no reason for any to give their names yet. We're assuming for now there's no real reason for anyone to be targeting refugees, though Bulk's not yet ruled out some chance of a personal dispute that may have started on board a returning ship. And no one could possibly imagine why anyone in his right mind would want to hurt poor sweet little Firestorm."

"That leaves Soundwave," Knockout finished, understanding at once exactly where it was she was going with her own reasoning. Firestorm just unfortunate enough to be close to him, and whoever did this obviously didn't care for the safety of her or anyone else." He shifted the youngling's weight a little on his knees, and frowned a second in thought. Slowly he began to shake his head a little. "The civilian police tried to pin the blame for all this on him. No matter that they had no real evidence, or that he was found unarmed... Some of them even tried taking it upon themselves to beat him up..."

"Ultra Magnus is coming back to Cybertron soon," Arcee said. "I got the memo the other day. He's going to take on the job of heading up the police force."

"Ive heard... mixed opinions of that bot..." Knockout mused.

"Opinions will allays be mixed, even among the Autobots," Arcee answered, with a small laugh. "He's a bit of hard head with no known sense of humor. Strict. To the point. But he's always been fair, and he'll be tough on corruption just as well as on crime. No way he'll stand for his bots, beating on a bot like Soundwave when he learns he's a legitimate defector, just trying hard to start over. The very same for you, if Primus forbid, you ever have trouble with those patollers."

"That's... certainly always good to know."

"Bulk' says Soundwave was angry as anything today. Doing too good of a job of blaming himself for whatever it was that actually happened..."

"He was," Knockout explained, while he nodded slowly in agreement. But the look on his face-plate showed that he was just as baffled by it all, as he was obviously concerned. "He caught up to me today at work, asked if I had a moment, and told him of course I did. So we talked a bit in my office. He thanked me three times for my part in helping save Firestrom's life. I told him it was nothing at all. But all the while, as we talked back and forth, he was all too busy verbally beating himself up. Arcee, I served beside him for so many years on the warship. I never thought I'd ever see the day I'd see Soundwave of anyone, clearly upset... defeated..."

"He loves her," Arcee answered simply, and with a smile on her face-plate. " Just as much as she loves him. If there's one thing that going to upset anybot... even Soundwave, it's..."

"Those two don't actually _love_ each other..." Knockout replied, his tone somewhere between dismay and questioning, disbelief and bewilderment. And immediately Arcee fought back the urge to burst out loathing.

"Only for the last few years now," she told him, nodding her head seriously. "The whole base knew it before either one of them ever admitted it..." she smiled at him silently a moment and shook her head, amused, before she finally muttered slowly, "were you seriously the last one to realize that?"

"Well I..." Knockout stammered and stumbled a little almost to comically, while he shook his own head in a way that was too a bit to over the top. "I knew there was obviously _something_ up with those two. I thought he liked to talk to her because she liked to listen. I figured she had some kind of youngling crush on him. Like those Earth girls we all knew about with a so called thing for mysterious 'bad boys...'"

"It's so much more than that for both those bots," Arcee said. She laughed at first at the look of shock on her bondmate's face-plate. But when the look turned quickly to near horror and shock, she stopped laughing at once and looked at him, concerned.

"Firestorm is almost still a youngling, and Soundwave is... well, different." Knockout still smiled a little as he explained, or at least it was obvious he tried to. But all the while he shook his head in his own clear disbelief over the whole idea. "I don't like it. I don't like anything about it."

"They never once asked anyone to like it, anymore than we ever did," Arcee chuckled back, dismayed.

"Little Firestorm could not know a thing about what it really takes or means to devote herself to a bot so emotionally damaged and broken. The nightmares, the flashbacks, any lack of any real idea of how the rest of the world behaves..."

"It isn't as if there's an instruction manual out there somewhere to teach someone what to do and she just failed to read it, you know. They'll deal with those things the same was we did and do; by trusting each other and trying their best.

"Neither of them could possibly know what love is."

"Of course they could know that!"

"I still don't like it!'

"Stubborn bot," Arcee said laughing. And playfully she smacked her mate lightly against his shoulder panel. But still she could fully understand where it was he was coming from. Knockout always had been particularly protective of Firestorm. And watching just how he held their own little one tighter against his frame, probably unconsciously at simply thinking about that, it filled with with a strange mix of amusement and dread.

"I can only imagine, in the century to come," she mused with a smile, "just how will you react when somebot first discovers he loves our little Cybershock?"

Knockout stared almost blankly for a moment in utter dismay He frowned just a second then, and that turned quickly to an all too dramatic look of horror. And finally, he stared down at the youngling in his lap, while his stronger arm held onto her just a bit tighter

"Nope," he said, his tone laughingly stubborn again. "Simply never going to happen. At least not before she's forty centuries old!"

"That's rediculous," Arcee laughed. And again she shook her head at him.

"Anybot that ever dares to look, with anything even slightly more than simply friendship at my baby girl..." Knockout said, seriously. Cybershock began to laugh in her tiredness, enjoying being hugged. And so he tightened his hold on her just a tiny bit more. Slowly his look, still horrified at the thought his mate had made him face, turned to something close to mock-homicidal. And in an almost too close to serious tone him mumbled, "we in the medical field do always have a need for offlined parts donors..."

* * *

"I've finished refining that syth-en you asked for last night," Speedbreaker said quickly, and looking up from her place standing near the small industrial grade refiner that was set up on a table in the corner of the medbay. Smiling then she gestured around the little work station. "I also cleaned the refiner itself, filters included, before using it, as well as organized your samples. Oh, and I found that data pad you said you lost yesterday." Behind her, Ratchet chuckled his approval, and grinned at her impressed.

"You've got a lot done already this morning. More than I would have asked of you. All I really needed was the refining."

"It's not any trouble," Speedy smiled. "I've been here since the sun came up this morning. I stopped to visit Firestorm for a while too. She looks great already. Bumblebee found her walking frame last night, still laying somewhere downtown, close to that blown energy distributor. It was broken unfortunately, but I took the liberty of fixing it for her."

"I'm discharging her today. Two days in the hospital is not bad at all considering how much worse it could have been for her," Ratchet stood a moment, just reflecting on his own thoughts yet again about the whole sad matter of the young bot and the still senseless harm to her. Finally he raised an optic and Speedy and questioned, baffled "you've been here working since sunrise?"

"I've had... things on my mind," Speedbreaker admitted slowly. And she shrugged a little as she looked up at the old medic. "I came into work, just trying to stay so busy..."

"Speedbreaker, is there something wrong?" Ratchet's concern was obvious at once.

"No..." Speedy shook her head. "I just..." she paused again, looking anxiously down toward the floor. "Ratchet, would I possibly be able to get a scan? If you have a moment of course."

"Well sure I have a moment," the old medic answered, nodding assurance. Then he chuckled just a little. "You really do need to be a little more specific though of course. What do you suppose you might need scanning _for_?"

"A possible newspark," Speedbreaker explained, after she'd hesitated for another moment. "I started to suspect I might be carrying again just before I left for vacation. I'm even more convinced today that maybe..."

"What is it that has you thinking so?"

"Discomfort in my chest again, just behind the panel, like it was at first with Hotwire. I'm tired just doing simple things, but I can't recharge more than two hours at a time... And I've can't get enough of anything iron flavoured..."

"Well... certainly one way to know for sure," Ratchet said. He led her toward a repair table near the back of the medbay and motioned for her to sit up on it, as he reached for his well used old med scanner, quickly turning it on. Quickly he reached back behind him, and in one motion, he pulled the curtain closed around the little work station.

"Would it be good news if you'd guessed right?" he asked cautiously, compassionately while he waited for the scanner to power up. "Or you would you be relieved if you were wrong?"

"I... I thought about that a lot while I was on Earth. And the truth is I still don't know. Both me and 'Bee always knew along we wanted Hotwire to be a big brother someday, but..." Speedbreaker thought a second, reflecting, as the old bot stood, waiting patently for her to go on. "The timing is no more ideal now that it was with our last one. But 'Bee and I both love Hotwire so much. I can't imagine my life without him now. And I know that if there is another on the way, there's always love enough for that one too."

"Well," Ratchet said, checking and rechecking the readout that flashed across the small screen of the scanner in his hand. "That someday is going to be soon. You are most definitely carrying." Instead of offering a hand then to help her back down from the repair table though, Ratchet rechecked the scanner readout yet again, and finally, needing a little better look at details that looked unusual, he asked her to lay down on the repair table.

"Is there something wrong?" Speedbreaker asked. Her tone was calm, though it was more then clear that she was struggling a little to keep it that way. And her optics showed her fast growing unease.

"No no... I don't believe so," Ratchet answered quickly and with assurance in the tone of his voice. The young bot may have learned she was indeed carrying again only moments before, but still it was obvious to the old medic just how much she really did want this youngling, even if she'd only just realized just how much she truly did. "It's just that..." he moved to hold his hand held scanner so that he could show her the little image on the small screen. "There are two of them."

"Wh... what?" Speedbreaker only managed to stammer a moment in shock as she sat herself back up again with help from Ratchet. "Twins?"

Just as soon as she'd managed to actually say that out loud, she looked suddenly anxious. And Ratchet chuckled a little in understanding, as he help back down to the floor. He nodded his head, And waited until she finally smiled back.

"I'll need to see you for checkups and scans far more often with these newsparks then I ever did with Hotwire, only because there are two and that's automatically just a bit high risk. I'll let you break all this news to Bumblebee, and of course I'll hope to see him too at your first checkup. And because you'll need two frames, it goes without saying of course that you should be starting the building process early. I'll happily give you all the workshop time you need to do so."

"Th... thank you..." Speedy answered, shaky and still clearly in shocked disbelief.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes/ I was so happy to see the first chapter so well liked. This one took me a while to get finished, mostly because I have a fair bit of this entire story plotted out already, but it's a bit tricky in places, to decide what goes where exactly, and what makes the most sense in which chapter. Regardless thank you again for the reviews, the favourites, and the feedback.**

 **Just a warning for this one again. This chapter contains something a very near assault against a female bot. I'm posting a warning just in case that might bother anyone, and I like to be safe.**

"'Ess'cuse me!" Firestorm called out cheerful, though no less alarmed, across the floor of the little downtown sweet shop. "Yu,forgot ya'sweeets..."

For a moment, the elderly grey painted bot that Firestorm had been speaking to, went on walking slowly toward the door of the shop. And she even began to hum to herself under her intakes as she moved with careful steps. But she turned around again, just as slow, before Firestorm could move to pursue her, bag in hand, with her walking frame. And with a light chuckle and a shake of her head, the old bot walked back toward the counter at the back of the shop again.

"Oh good gracious, dear," the old bot said, looking around in obvious dismay. "I seem to have forgotten my little bag of sweets."

"Ah'got'eet," Firestorm answered. And she almost laughed at realizing the old bot had not even heard her calling after her, but instead had finally realized on her own that the little bag was missing.

"Thank you, dear," the elderly bot said, as she took the bag that Firestorm held out to her. And for another moment she just stood smiling as she looked around the shop, holding the bag in her hand.

"A few sweets for my grand-creation's own small great grand-creation," she mused in another moment or so. And she chuckled as she raised on optic at Firestorm. "Yes, indeed I really am that old a bot already." her face-plate turned serious and she added slowly, "The younglings of my own grown younglings were the last of our family to ever see Cybertron after the start of the war. I know the generations that came after, all born on ships, are just as glad to see the Cybertron they knew only in stories, as you surely are."

"I'am glad evy'day ta'be home'ta seee dis place...," Firestorm said, grinning brightly.

There was only so much that Firestorm could do inside the sweet shop, when it came to her work. Her processor damage and the effect that had on her body and her balance would always limit her to some significant degree. But still, there was a lot she _could_ do, when she was left to try it for herself. And though she did spend a decent amount of most shifts she worked either sitting on a chair behind the counter, while she operated a register, or simply doing so while leaning against her walking frame - she had also mastered origination of the little shop, could manage to pull herself up on ladders to fill the high candy bins, and many locals in the city had even grown used to her mumbled voice answering their comm-calls to the shop.

Firestorm had learned early into her current shift though, that standing for long at all was just not going to work for her at all. And the ladder was most definitely out entirely. The young bot, usually just as full of energy as she could possibly be, considering her extreme limitations in mobility for one barely out of youngling-hood, was growing tired and stiff that afternoon, just running the register from her place on a chair.

With a shake of her head, she reminded herself that she had just been discharged from the hospital a day before. And she wondered, quite reasonably, if she should of course even be at work at all . Certainly Ratchet would not approve if only he knew she'd gone back that morning. But Firestorm liked to work. She'd waited so long, before she'd gotten that job, just to have one of her very own. And since the day she'd replaced Speedbreaker in the little shop, already a few years before, Firestorm seldom missed a single shift.

"Firestorm? Are you sure you're alright to be here?" the shop owner, Crankshaft, questioned from somewhere unseen inside the shop. Firestorm turned to find him, standing halfway up the narrow metal staircase that led to the apartment he lived in with his bond-mate, above the place. He leaned over the railing, and looked at her with obvious concern.

"I'good!" Firestorm mumbled her answered just as usual. But she was quick about it. And she nodded her head with assurance as she did. The young bot may not have been quite up her usual self just yet, but she felt just fine as long as she was sitting down and not trying to rush around. And she told him that quickly.

"Fair enough," Crankshaft nodded, smiling. "TopGear and I are on our way out tonight, to go and pay a visit to that daughter of ours and her mate. We do after all have a little grand-creation in need of some spoiling." The old shopkeeper chuckled then, and his smile fast became a grin. "If you need to close up shop early and go on home, don't hesitate to do so."

Firestorm nodded. Certainly the shop owners were no strangers to closing early, or to opening late. Indeed so many places of business in the small city, most of them still small family run operations, were known to open and close whenever the bots that ran them could get over to open or needed to close, because really there were just not enough workers to hire as help.

"Say'hi ta Speedy fa'mee," Firestorm said, grinning back in lieu of any reply to his comment. "Tell'her tanks'fa fixin' ma'frame 'fa'mee."

"Will do." Crankshaft smiled again, before his face-plate quickly turned serious. "Remember to consume a little extra energon tonight while you work. Get some from the dispenser up in my apartment. You're still recovering. You need the extra fuel."

Crankshaft and his mate, Topegear, may have been Speedbreaker's creators. But both of them had come to care for Firestorm nearly as much as they did their own daughter. And she had certainly come to know it. Firestorm nodded her head in thanks and understanding and waved cheerfully to the old red and gold bot as he walked slowly across the floor of the shop and out the door.

Not long after Crankshaft had left, a chatty flyer frame-type walked into the shop with his twin younglings, Takeoff and Runway. The pair of little bots - almost identical except for differences in the colouring of the highlights over their dark grey frames – ran at once for candy bins and began choosing flavors. Their carrier of course stopped to chat. And he stood leaning against the counter for a good while to do so. The younglings meanwhile grew increasingly rambunctious as they ran around inside the shop, and quite randomly it seemed, they began a round of play-fighting just steps from the door. That was all good and well, until a bin of sweets fell over just as soon as one twin's little wings hit it in his sudden careless spin.

Firestorm stood up at once from the chair she'd been using to sit in at work, concerned for the moment of course that the offending youngling, Takeoff, might just have gotten hurt. But he hadn't at all, and he and his brother both stood in the middle of floor with shocked looks on their face-plates of younglings in trouble. And sure enough their carrier grabbed them at once, pulling both against his frame with one of his arms, and shaking his head while he kept his now protesting children restrained that way. Finally, letting both of them go again as he paid for the little bags of sweets in their hands , and then promptly grabbing both bags to store them in his own storage compartment, he offered to pick up the contents of the spilled bin. And he apologized, with a shaking head, for his younglings' behaviour.

"Is'okay," Firestorm answered quickly and smiling. "It'happen..."

And with her hands quickly placed onto the bars of her walking frame, she walked across the shop to pick up the spilled bin and it's contents herself, after assuring the flustered flyer that she could easily deal with it herself. The little family quickly left the shop after that

Each sweet in that large heavy container, like most sold in the shop, was individually wrapped. And Firestorm, reflected with a chuckle just how glad she was of that fact now, as she put then all back into the bin, now up-righted on the floor near the scattered pile.

"Ah'sory," she called out, mumbling when the door opened again, and she heard the footsteps from more than one bot walking inside from out on the sidewalk. "Jus'gimme a'second."

Looking up from the sweets she was picking up from the floor, Firestorm turned to see two large bots in the shop. And both of them were frowning at once in displeasure. Leaving the mess at once, she grabbed her frames handlebars again and hauled herself to her feet just as quickly as she could.

"How'can Ah'help'yu?" she asked, smiling. But the pair of bots just frowned far more then even before, and in another second both were flat out scowling at her. Firestrom only smiled brighter and stood, looking up at them both, leaning on the bars of her frame.

"Processor damaged, glitch case," one of the bots – a tall red and white one, with a strangely concerning number of recent dents – muttered at her with a disgusted shake of his head. That was certainly uncalled for and Firestorm knew it. The bot, she noticed quickly, smelled strongly of high grade, as did his friend. And she stood where she was and silent a second, just wondering to herself what it was she should actually do.

"Ah'dun tink yu'need'ta be in'here," Firestrom said, deciding at once to simply turn them both out, or at least to try to. And she struggled a little, just to keep her voice steady and her expression serious, despite the pounding of her spark. To drive home her point, she gestured with one of her constantly shaking hands, right toward the door, behind the pair of bots. "Yu'drunk."

Firestorm hoped beyond any hope, that the bots would just turn and leave, because strangely she got a bad feeling from both of them. But they didn't go anywhere. One of them, the red and white one that had already insulted her, stepped toward her fast. And in one swift move, he kicked the bottom of her walking frame hard enough that it was knocked away from her to land sideways on the floor of the shop. Firestorm stumbled badly, trying too quickly, to regain her standing balance without it. And she would have fallen to the floor because of it, had she instead managed one clumsy step sideways to catch herself against a shelf filled with colourful sweet containers.

"Fragging glitch retard!" the drunken bot snarled. And behind him, his black and green friend – just as drunk, and equally as scuffed and dented – began to laugh like something was hilarious.

"Get'outta here!" Firestorm said, shouting now and scowling right back at them both, as she gestured again, now quite pointedly. Letting go of the shelf, she leaned carefully forward to pick her frame again. But to her dismay, the big bot kicked it away from her and across the shop, before he shoved her hard into the shelf.

They were likely going to rob the shop. Firestorm reasoned that out quickly for herself when she saw the second bot, the still laughing black and green one, move steadily toward the register, set up on the counter in the far back corner. And far from willing to stand by and let Speedbreaker's creators be robbed of the livelihood they worked so hard for, she debated with herself quickly over exactly what to do. She knew she couldn't reach the commlink – that was behind the counter. And she certainly had no hope at all of physically fighting with one bot, let along two. She decided finally on leaving the shop, leaving her frame where it was, tipped far far across the floor, and making her way without it as fast as she possibly could, to an energon bar next door, where she could ask someone in there to call for the patrol.

The red and white bot was much closer to her than his friend was – indeed the black and green brute was no longer making any secret at all, of his intent to get the register open by simply throwing it to the floor and brutishly stomping on it – and the bot was faster than she was. Firestrom's stumbling steps, so hopefully clumsy without her frame, were no match for those of an able bodied and much bigger bot. And long before she could hope to make it anywhere even close to the door, the red and white fellow had grabbed hard and roughly by the arm, and forced her against the wall behind her.

"Where ya goin'? He asked her, mocking as he scowled in her face-plate. "Don't run away just yet little lady. I wanna have a little fun tonight."

"F... fun?" Firestorm mumbled, her unease too great for her to hide by now. And disbelief and dread filled her spark when the big drunken bot's optics wandered slowly over her body, from top to bottom and then halfway back up, stopping at the cover of her interface panel.

"Yeah. Fun," the bot said, too slowly, condescending as he forced her closer against the wall, and pressed himself against her. For a moment he just stood close to her and his body stinking of high grade, brought her close to gagging. After a moment more and another, much slower look over her tormenting form, he whispered close to the side of her head, "you're sure an ugly, odd looking thing. But still I'll bet that makes you easy..."

"Frag'off" Firestorm mumbled, helpless and trying hard to make the tone of her voice one of suriousness. In desperation, she smacked him across the side of her face-plate with the one hand he wasn't holding pinned against the wall. But that only served to anger him, and he growled at her as his hand went for her interface panel.

"Such adult language for a pile of scrap who surely should have died..." the big bot mumbled aggressively. And she wiggled backwards against the wall as much as she possibly could, struggling to avoid his wandering and certainly unwanted hand.

"What in Primus' name are you doing?" the other bot asked, obviously dismayed, as he looked up from his futile task of trying to break open the register by stomping on it and throwing it around on the floor. He looked around, nervous now, even if he did keep right on trying to bust up the till. "I thought we just came in for the credit coins..."

"You get that open, and I'll get this shop-bot," the red and white fellow said, menacing and with the worst kind of grin across his face-plate. "When I'm done, you can have her..."

Firestorm thought a second that the second bot, the black and green one, might just help her by speaking out in disapproval of his friend. But the black and green bot's optics, first narrowed in confusion, finally lit up with possibilities. And she knew that not only would she have no help from him, but her situation was now even worse. She kicked at the bot that held her, and screamed until he silenced her by pressing his body against her tight enough to force the intake from her vent.

"I wasn't counting on a prize like you tonight," he taunted sickeningly, while he began to rock his body a little against hers suggestively in the still standing positions, and she struggled to raise her leg just enough to kick him square in the knee-joint. "Am I first to call you a prize, little femme? A shame I think. But then no one does want the damaged ones..."

"Dun'ya dare' touch'me..." Firestorm warned. But she knew full well her tone of voice was hardly close to as menacing as she could only dream it was. And her spark, already pounding and flipping with her panic, began to pound harder before it dropped, seemingly into her fuel tank.

The door to the sweet shop flew open in the next second. And Firestrom barely dared to believe it really had. She reflected somewhere in the very back of her mind, on the stupidity of the violent bots who had obviously forgotten even to lock it once inside. But the rest of her attention was on the purple and dark blue flash of motion that crossed the shop fast, in the midst of light footsteps.

"Soundwave," she exclaimed, in disbelieving relief, as she watched the optics of the red and white bot in front of her open wide in horror. Unlike the two bots in their act of poor judgment and stupidly, Soundwave turned at once to lock the door behind him.

"We don't want any trouble," the black and green bot across the shop exclaimed. He stood up straight, right in the middle of slamming the register into the floor, and he dropped it onto his own foot in doing so. "We were just messing around!"

But Soundwave's attention was one the red and white bot to stood in front of Firestrom. And before the bot could even make his sputtering voice say even one sensible word, Both of Soundwave's electrified cables had shot forward from his body, and wrapped tight around the offending bot's legs. He was yanked from the floor, with a most undignified shriek of terror and surprise, and his head bounced hard off the edge of a shelf behind him as he fell. The second bot tried to make a run for it, heading fast toward the door But Soundwave's long arm was just long enough that he could reach him as he ran passed. And that bot received only a hard blow to the face-plate for his trouble. He dropped to his knees on the floor, gasping in shock and looking like he would beg for his life any second.

"Please..." the red and white fellow begged, sitting up on the floor, rubbing his head and still wrapped up tightly in the cables. "I... I didn't touch her. I... don't... I don't know why you, a former 'con would care so... so much. But I didn't touch her!" The bot screamed horribly as electrical charge passed through the cables that held him, filling his body with countless volts of Soundwave's rage at him.

"He... he didn't," Firestorm said slowly. Part of her hated to speak up for the bot that had hurt her, even if he hadn't managed to follow though on his ultimate intention. But she knew that Soundwave would kill him, probably throwing away his own future in the process, if she said nothing to stop him now. "Ya got'here 'fore'he... could..."

"Strong suggestion – run," Soundwave said, looking from one offender to the other, as he let the one he held go. His speech had reverted again to his too familiar formal monotone. But still it did little to hide his anger. The pair of drunken bots were both on their feet at once and shakily both half ran and half stumbled toward the door. One unlocked it with a shaking hand and both were gone, rushing into the street in well under one flat second.

"Soundwave," Firestorm said. Her hands were shaking from shock and relief, just as much as from the damage to her processor in that moment. Her knees gave out beneath her. And she would have fallen right to the floor, had he not grabbed her quickly and pulled her against him. "They'tried'ta rob'tha place... he woulda... if'yu hadn't come'in..."

Outside in the street, sirens were screaming again.

* * *

"Have you seen Cybershock's fuel container anywhere?" Arcee asked, dismayed as she looked around the common areas of her family's apartment for the third time by then, and did not see it in any of the places she imagined it should be.

"Did you try the sanitazer?" Knockout called back in reply to her question. "Or... the top shelf of the cupboard by the door?"

"Yes to both," Arcee answered. And she stood a moment shaking her head, before she looked around a partial wall, and into the living room, and spoke to her youngling. "Cybershock, where did you leave your energon container?"

Knockout was, at present, in the middle of doing his twice daily rehabilitation exercises, working on the floor in the living room. And Cybershock copied most of his repetitive motions, while she periodically jumped to her feet, ran around and served, in general, as the very strictest of task masters in his efforts.

"I dunno..." she said, replying to her carrier's question, at the very same second that she flopped back down, face-up onto the living room floor, and began to lift her left leg up, and let it fall before lifting it again, to encourage her creator to keep on doing so with his.

"Alright, little miss," Arcee said, chuckling as she tried a slightly modified approach in speaking to her little youngling. "Where were you when you last refuelled?"

"I dunno..." Cybershock answered, just as helpful – or not – as before.

Defeated, and shaking her head while forcing a laugh, Arcee wandered back into the apartment's entry way, where she opened an upper cupboard, grabbed one of several adult sized containers, and placed it below the dispenser by the door to fill it half full.

"I don't wike that one," Cybershock said, when Arcee set the container of fuel down on the low table in the living room. "I wike _my_ lil' fuel 'tainer."

"I'm sure you do," Arcee answered. And once again she shook her head. "And if only we could find it, you could use it."

"Hey" Cybershock said to her creator, all but ignoring her carrier and the container of energon entirely then. And she sat up on the living room floor, frowning at him with her hands on her hips. "I don't think you 'spose to stop yet."

"Okay, you win," Knockout laughed, as he smiled at the youngling. "I'll keep on trying for a bit..."

"There is no try!" Cybershock proclaimed, sounding strangely like a few good – if not over the top – Autobots Arcee had known in the course of her life. "There's only do and suss'eed!"

"Cybershock," Arcee called to her child, from her place still standing beside the little end table. "Come here and drink some energon please." The youngling, Arcee knew all too well, would likely forget so often about her fuel all together if not reminded, sometimes constantly, to drink it.

Knockout was entirely capable by then, of sitting himself up, from laying positions, under his own power entirely. His use of grab bars, and any improvised thing he could find to help him, were all but forgotten by then. And he carefully sat himself up on the floor, before gently nudging the youngling with one hand toward the little table where her fuel had been left for her.

"I dun tink I wike this!" Cybershock proclaimed, making a face after a sip from her container. And the stubborn child promptly set it right down where she'd found it again, on top of the table. "I want _my_ energon. This diff'ent..."

"New additive mix is all," Arcee answered. She smiled - though it was strangely just a little forced - kneeling down to offer the container again. "You're getting old enough for a different mix now."

"I don't wike it!"

"Try it again."

Cybershock, as lovely as she was, could also be an undeniably strong willed, stubborn child – not that it was ever likely she could have been any other way, given the natures of both of her parents. And true to her all too typical strength of will, Cybershock huffed loudly, and turned her body to face the other way.

"Cybershock," Arcee said in warning then. But her tone was still calm, patient. She stayed for a moment, kneeling on the floor like that. And finally she got to her feet again, pretending that she had forgotten all about the child's need for fueling entirely.

"Oh-kayyy..." Cybershock said, in less than a second. Her tone of voice was little more than a sigh of submission And she grabbed the container from its place on the table, drinking half of it, before pulling a face and drinking a bit more.

"Well played," Knockout said to his mate under his intakes. And Arcee flashed a triumphant little smirk in his direction, as Cybershock took another drink from her container.

Arcee took a few quick steps across the room, moving idly in the direction of the large patio doors, which she was intent on opening a while. And after three steps toward it and not paying attention, the toe of her right foot banged hand against a hidden leg of the sofa against the side wall. The pain of that hard sudden impact sent jolting shock waves through her lower leg at once. And hopping on her uninjured foot a second, she barely managed to resist an urge to curse out loud. Cybershock, true to form, burst out laughing in under a second.

"Not funny, little miss," Arcee mumbled, With more head shaking, and she stomped, flustered now, toward the patio. "So, so not funny."

A small metal toy building block lay in her path, and she didn't notice that either. Or at least she didn't until she stepped right on it, with her already sore and still throbbing foot. This time she was even closer to curing out loud than before. And she clampped a hand over her mouth to avoid doing exactly that, because of course her youngling sat close by listening while she drank her energon.

"Arcee," Knockout said, his tone serious and concerned. He looked at her across the living room from his place on the floor, as she yanked open the patio doors with far more force than the job required. "What wrong?"

Arcee shook of his questioning at once with a wave of her hand, and stepped back from the now open door, picking up the offending block on her way. But Knockout was nothing if not persistent. And he looked at her intently while she walked back toward him, before sitting on the sofa nearby and up against the side wall of the living room.

"I can't help thinking about that mess tonight in the sweet shop," she admitted. And once again she shook her head. She'd heard a good bit about the matter not long before, thanks to a comm call from Bulkhead, working back at the base, about it. But her former Auotbot teammate had talked her out of rushing out to even try doing anything about it herself because of her youngling and disabled mate.

She was used to war crimes far more than civil ones. And so far, when it came to troubles among the refugee neutrals, the worst of concerns had generally been fights and drunken misconduct, as well as the odd case of someone disturbing the peace. An attempted robbery; that was one thing. And that was bad enough. But a near assault on a disabled minibot shop worker – and one that happened to be a friend no less? That was a crime on a whole new level entirely. And Arcee fought back her anger as it welled up fast within her, just thinking of the whole matter.

"The civilian patrol will get those bots," Knockout said. And Arcee nodded, knowing full well he'd said it only in an attempt to help. But still she had her doubts and worries.

The police force, or what loosely passed for one on a good day, was filled with corruption, and too many members concerned more with settling scores established in ignorance, then in much actual police work. Too many patrollers were so clearly running on power trips those days. And reports of police brutality were steadily on the rise. And with the police bots busy beating others up on a near daily basis, Arcee wondered with an inward sigh, just how long it would take many of them to work through an actual case where it mattered.

"Bulkhead said he found the shop in shambles when he showed up with a couple of patrol bots," Arcee explained after a moment. And she smiled slightly in relief at knowing that at least Bulkhead was helping to work the case, and he would get things done if no one else did. "He found Soundwave with Firestorm in the middle of the floor, with broken glass from busted jars everywhere. He saved Firestorm from being violently assaulted. He might even have saved her life."

"I think I might have been a little bit wrong about Firestorm and Soundwave," Knockout said, his tone clearly reflective. And he just stayed where he was, sitting on the floor of the living room.

"We all have our moments," Arcee said, laughing a little despite the seriousness of their conversation.

* * *

Soundwave sat inside his small room at the end of a little used passageway inside what was once the the Auotbot base of operations. He tried to read the data pad he'd set propped up resting on his simple metal work desk. But his focus was on anything but computing notes that night, and to his frustration, he could barely recall which line he'd read last, in order to read the next one.

Laserbeak was restless too. And where usually she would have been recharging by that time of night, comfortably on her favoured perch set up in a corner above the desk, she was instead flapping her wings loudly as she flew across the room and back again, jumping repeatedly between the window sill, her perch and the top of the door-frame. Soundwave had tried twice to make her stop her jumping and flapping about. But she simply would not, and he certainly couldn't force her to do – or not do – anything. With a sigh as he lost his place in his reading again, and another sigh of dismay at the little bird, Soundwave finally shoved the datapad aside on his desk.

Laserbeak had so little to do since the war had ended. Most any purpose she had served for centuries had been related directly to the war effort. And now it felt, at least to her, like she had little purpose at all. Soundwave knew far better than to treat her as a common pet, in the absence of any real job to task her with. She was so much more than that. And far too intelligent to be expected to sit on a perch most of her life and amuse anyone. Soundwave had wondered before with great seriousness, how exactly she could become a full fledged and useful member of society. And that night, he wondered again.

A sudden and unexpected knock and the door, made him look in its direction. But the sound was so light, and so out of place, that for a second he dismissed it as nothing more than setting floors or noise below, in the training gym. But another, just slightly louder knock followed the first when he did not answer it. And slowly, with caution born of centuries in a life where no one could truly be trusted, he crossed the door and pushed the door release, letting it halfway slide open.

"S...Soundwave," Firestorm whispered, shakily. She stood in the dim lit empty hallway beyond the door, leaning on the handlebars of her walking frame, and obviously uneasy.

"Are you... alright?" he asked her. And with a gently tug against her arms, he pulled her into the room with him, before closing the door behind them.

"Ah'm oh'kay," Firestorm said, but her voice was still so quiet, and that alone hardly made it convincing She glanced around the room, no bigger than the tiny one she had, and decorated simply with dark natural colours, and Soundwave realized only then that she had never actually been inside his room at all before that night.

"Ah'jus keep on'thinkin' 'bout tha'bot in the'shop," she slowly explained. Her voice was slightly louder now and she spoke with some degree of confidence, as she moved to sit in the chair in front of the work desk. But as soon as she had sat down, she wrapped ehr constantly trembling hands around herself in a gesture of discomfort that much have been almost entirely unconscious, and she visibly shuddered. "Ah'cant fo'get his hands allover'mee, grabbin' like I's some... object'ta'be used... ruined."

Soundwave did the only thing he could possibly think of to do, and kneeled down quickly on the floor of his living space in front of the desk chair, so that he could be at her level. And slowly he moved to pull her against him tightly.

"Can'Ah stay'wit yu ta'night?" she questioned him slowly, after a few long moments in which she'd simply hugged him right back.

"Yes," Soundwave answered simply.

She had asked him before, a handful of recent times. And as much as he'd wished he could have let her, he'd always refused. But now, everything was different. He could not possibly refuse her simple request again.

"Have you refuelled?" he questioned, as soon as he realized that she likely hadn't yet done so before the attack at her workplace, and she may not have long after the fact.

"No..." she admitted, shaking her head against the front of his body armour. "Haven'felt up'ta any..."

"You really do need the fuel," Soundwave answered, well aware of just how much she really indeed need it then more than ever because she was still recovering from serious injury. And he stood up at once to fill a container from the little energon dispenser across his room, near the small window. He handed it to her, and slowly she took a drink from it.

"Tank'yu," she said slowly. To his relief she took another drink from the container.

Soundwave waited until Firestorm had finished the container of energon entirely, and then seeing the tiredness obvious on her face-plate, he offered her a hand up from his desk chair. He led her slowly toward his recharge station, and with some clear uncertainty, she climbed up to sit on it.

"Yu'really would'a kill'tat bot..." she said in a mix of statement and question. And he nodded slowly in response.

"I would have without hesitation, if I'd had to," he answered honestly.

"Yu'shoudn' eva'fight like'tha fa'mee..." Firestorm said, suriously. "In'tha optics'a'da police ya'still be the guilty'one..."

"You were an innocent bot, and treated like property," Soundwave explained simply. Because to him, that said it all.

"Tha's why'ya join'wit da'Cons?" Firestrom questioned hesitantly. Her tone was one of understanding. And far from judging him as she spoke of that, instead she reached out while he stood close by, and held his hands in her smaller ones, while she smiled. "Defence'of bots'from'ownership by'otthas?"

"That cause, among others, was what I once believed I was fighting for."

"Do'yu tink'I'm an'odd'looking, ugly'lil'bot?" Firestrom asked suddenly after they had both been silent for a very long moment.

"No," Soundwave answered at once. And he paused a moment, thinking, He never had been one for asking questions, but slowly he asked her anyway, what it was that could possibly have made her think that of herself.

"Tha'bot in'da shop ta'nigh..." Firestorm said. She spoke into his armour, which her face-plate was pressed against. But still he could understand her just well enough like that.

"Perhaps I was too hasty in letting him live," Soundwave answered. And he was only slightly joking in his comment.

Soundwave had never thought much about the concept of beauty, or at least he didn't in the way he knew others often did. He knew what beauty meant, of course. And he knew what made a bot 'pretty,' at least to himself – though he knew too that such things were generally relative. But such things just just never mattered much to him. The beauty - or the lack of - to one's features, hardly seemed relavent to his interactions with them. And had he ever found one truly attractive to him, it wasn't as though he would or could have acted on his attraction in any way. And so for the centuries he'd lived, he'd simply never bothered at all to notice such things really at all.

Little Firestorm was the first bot to ever make him notice her. He'd noticed right away that he thought she was pretty. And the very idea that he could think so of anyone by then left him dismayed and somewhere close to terrified at himself. He'd never planned on love. He didn't know how. Yet somehow he loved her... and that terrified him too.

He opened his mouth again to speak, determined to explain all of this to her, though he was sure she already knew and understood. But before he could say a thing, he saw her head fall suddenly forward. She lifted it again, and it tilted to the left side instead of staying straight. The little bot closed her mouth and promptly she opened it again. But still she did not form words, though clearly she tried to. And all the while the ever constant slight trembling of her hands increased until it had became horrible shaking.

"Firestorm," Soundwave said, firmly, trying hard as he could to hold her attention, because that was about all he knew to do, even after he'd seen this a least a dozen times by then. He thought fast, deciding exactly what it was that he should do with her. Her hands let go of his abruptly, and just as soon as she let go of him, he moved to put one of his arms gently behind her body. "I believe you are going to go right into reboot. I won't let you fall."

With his arm still behind her, he placed her, slowly so as not to startle her, backward onto the recharge station. And she stayed there, optics dimming and brightening only to dim again, while her limbs shook worse than before. Soundwave stood still, right beside his recharge station and the little bot that was now on it. He wondered what exactly he should do with her, as she continued to shake and tremble, and he cursed himself for still not yet knowing for sure. His first thought was that he should comm the medbay. But he remembered as well that reboots were most often no serious issue at all. He decided quickly that he should wait until she woke up – it would ideally only be a moment – and from there consider how she felt.

So he stood for a moment more, just watching her. A second more and her shaking slowed, and quickly it stopped. Her optics opened, quicker than Soundwave might have expected they would, and she moved, clearly trying hard to sit herself up again, though her body was still far too uncorroborated from rebooting to manage to do so. Soundwave moved slightly to help her, but quickly he had a far better idea. And with some hesitation, he walked around the recharge station and lay beside her on it.

* * *

"Fweeze!" Hotwire yelled across the playground. "You under re-rest."

"You neva' catch me!" Cybershock shouted back. All too excited in their game of 'police-bots and robbers.' She ran backwards, across the thin rubber safety flooring around a set of climbing bars. And finally she began to climb straight up the bars that supported the structure at its middle.

The playground the younglings played on, was a simple thing, constructed quickly the year before by Bulkhead's construction crew in a couple days downtime for the younglings of their city to use. It was hardly anything impressive at all, climbing bars and a slide, rubber mats to fall onto and wide high up walkways to run across. The thing was modelled, if anything, after the playgrounds of Earth, because Bulkhead had frankly never seen a playground of any other sort. And the little ones so loved it.

"I said fweeze, wobber!" shouted Hotwire, laughing while he tried to sound far too serious, as he gave immediate chase up the bars.

"You're never 'resting me!" Cybershock, fearless as ever, jumped from the bars at a height well over her head, rolled across the ground with the skill of any trained front-line soldier, and got to her feet quickly, running for the slide well across the playground.

"Cybershock, be careful!" It was Speedbreaker who gave that urgent warning. But she was of course a carrier too, and she and Arcee so often watched out for one another's younglings without a thought about it.

"Scrap," Arcee muttered beside her, on the bench they occupied, and about as floored by her child's reckless jump as her friend was. She sighed in relief when Cybershock got right to her feet and ran, and thouhg just about to get up fast and run to grab her, she sat back down.

"My kid is crazy," she said, shaking her head a second later. She leaned back a second on the bench and said, sighing again with a chuckle of nervous laughter, "between worrying that she's going to break her neck any day now just having her fun, and worrying that Knockout is going to fall and and break his, trying so hard to walk in rehab, I don't know how I haven't had a spark attack already!"

"It sounds though like Knockout is making a lot of rapid progress the last few days," Speedbreaker said. Her optics moved between both of the running younglings while she still payed attention to their conversation.

"He was able to transform into his vehicle mode this morning," Arcee said. And a smile came to her face-plate as she did. "He certainty can't drive. He can't even move forward in an alt mode – though strangely he can reverse a very short distance. Cybershock wasn't there to see that, and he's so excited, as you can probably image, to show her as soon as he can. She's never seen his vehicle mode..."

"I said fweeze! You under re-rest," Hotwire yelled, laughing out on the playground. Cybershock leapt over a railing and held her balance perfectly, standing on the very edge of a walkway high in the air, and with no obvious care for just how high up she actually was.

"You never take me 'live!" she shouted back, right before she began to walk sideways holding the railing and perhaps too quickly, while Hotwire scrambled clumsily up the bars to get to her.

"He's never going to catch her," Speedbreaker said, with an amused look. Then quietly she continued, not nearly so amused, "On the subject of Cybershock breaking her neck, perhaps I should be worried about my Hotwire breaking his just trying to keep up with her."

"Cybershock is unusually reckless," Arcee answered, cringing a little when her youngling dropped from the rail feet first. But she didn't stop her, because she knew the safely mat would break her fall. "I'm not sure she knows what danger means, and that's not exactly always a good thing." She shook her head, concerned. "Most younglings are not that way. Hotwire knows better."

"Soon enough, Hotwire will have a pair of siblings to chase around when he can't keep up with your little one," Speedy laughed, somewhat nervous and still in near disbelief.

"Have you wrapped your head around it yet?"

"Not yet. I mean a bit yes, of course. But just the very thought of suddenly having two more, all at once..." Speedbreaker paused a moment and then went on, with a smile now on her face-plate. "'Bee couldn't possibly be happier. I told him I'm worried because we're still young. We still have so little. He said we'll make it work. That no matter how long it takes us to give them much in life, our younglings – all three of them - will never doubt we love them more than anything."

"'Bee always did want his own family," Arcee reminded her, smiling.

Out on the playground, Cybershock had begun to clamber up the high set of bars again, climbng higher than ever this time. She quickly reached the bars that held the structure stable from the top, and were not likely intended to even be climbed at all. Hotwire had chased her up so far – a tiny 'police-bot' still determined to catch his 'robber.' But he stopped well below half way, visibly scared to go any further And slowly he began to climb back down.

To Cybershock though, climbing just as high as she possibly could was clearly an adventure and challenge. And even when she was no longer running from her playmate for the sake of their game, she still climbed higher.

"Scrap!" Arcee muttered for the second time that morning. And in under a second she was on her feet and hurrying toward the climbing bars with Speedbreaker right behind her.

"Cybershock," she called from the ground, and looking high up over her head, dismayed entirely by the height her child had easily climbed. "Can you get down?"

"Sure," the tiny youngling answered easily. And for one so small, still a first frame, and very young, she spoke with self assured confidence. But to her carrier's shock and rapidly growing near panic, she only climbed still slightly higher, instead of coming back down.

"Climb back down here please," Arcee said firmly, before she added with emphasis, "carefully."

Arcee knew she could easily climb that structure herself, with little difficulty at all, and safely retrieve her troublesome youngling, if said youngling were to need her help. She'd climbed far higher things, in the height of too many battles over several centuries. She'd climbed in the midst of weapons fire, while acid rain poured over the planet. This was only simply playground equipment. To her it was nothing. But still, something in the back of her mind told her to let her child try, no matter how small she was. The youngling was confident. It seemed unwise, unfair perhaps, to take that from her now.

Cybershock paused a moment, her feet on one flat bar, and one hand holding onto on above her head. For a second she turned her head so that she could look down, and Arcee's spark sunk at that. But the youngling, to her greatest dismay, laughed before quickly began to scramble down the upper supports again and and back onto the climbing structure, before she paused again perhaps two meters from the ground and turned, one foot still on a bar, the other hanging in the air and only one hand holding anything at all.

"Mama," she yelled happily, "catch me!"

Cybershock leapt from the climbing bars before Arcee could manage to fully react. But she managed quickly to brace herself firmly, arms in front of her, and catch her youngling anyway, the very second she launched herself at her, in a show of the innocent trust of childhood, laughing. Thrown of balance by the sudden impact and the weight of her child, Acree stumbled back a step, before her feet left the ground entirely and she fell backward, to land in an awkward sitting position, with Cybershock still in her arms. Promptly she began to laugh right along with the little one, who had burst immediately into waves of happy laughter, while her little feet kicked in the air.

A sudden loud sequel of tires and brakes made her look quickly toward the edge of the playground that ran along the main road that ran through 'downtown.' And she leapt to her feet, pulling her youngling closer against her, as a bot in a blue and white vehicle mode left the road at a speed to fast for the middle of the the city, drove up over the pedestrian walkway and careened toward the playground set up in front of him.

Hotwire stood near the edge of the playground equipment and nearly in the path of the speeding alt mode. And for a second the tiny bot froze in obvious shock and terror, before he took a few fast steps backwards, only to bump against the slide, which the speeder almost ran right into.

"Speedbreaker!" the blue and white bot hollered, the second he;d transformed – somewhat awkwardly - to his bot mode. He stood up with a fair bit of stumbling, from the position he'd come to rest in, kneeling on the safely mats. And standing in one place, he wobbled badly back and forth from one foot to the other. "Fancy'meetn' you'ere!"

The blue and white bot - obviously well past a little bit drunk- was clearly one that knew Speedy, or at least he'd known her once. And Arcee remembered after a second of thinking about it, that they had come in once on the same refugee ship.

Speedbreaker, for all her usual mild manner and tendency for non-confrontation was on him at once. Stomping toward him with rage in her optics and before Arcee could even question whether she should try to stop her, she pointed a finger in his face, standing up on the fronts of her feet and glared near daggers.

"Waste of space, drunken slagger," she yelled, her tone strangely dangerous for a small young bot. And she even dared to shave him backward them, causing him to stumble badly in his drunken state. "You nearly drove right into my youngling!"

"Who?" the stranger asked, clueless and stumbling again from foot to foot. He stepped backward a couple of long dragging steps, and he nearly fell over again. Hotwire took that second to second to run in Arcee's direction, and she grabbed him without a thought, kneeling on the ground to hold tightly to both younglings at once.

"Reckless, idiotic fool. This is a playground. It's the middle of the fragging morning!" Speedbreaker yelled. She made a fist with one of her hands, and in under a second she punched the bot – one a fair bit larger and heaver then she was – square in the centre of his chest plate. The drunken bot, stumbled back, rocking back and forth a second before-he fell hard to the ground sputtering in shock. Arcee resisted an urge to cheer her friend on, in spite of herself.

She had for a decent while, secretly thought more then once about how she'd wished that Speedbreaker could have been and Autobot with her and the rest of the team she fought along side, even if only for the somewhat selfish reason that she had so often wished she'd had another two wheeled speeder to work strategy with and relate to. She'd never thought however to even imagine that Speedbreaker would have been much good on the front lings of battle. But now, watching her in the present moment, Arcee would have chuckled had the situation been less serious, at imagining that Speedy might just have taken down Starscream had she only had the right motivation for it.

"Speedbreaker," the bot mumbled from his place sprawled across the ground. And he struggled to get back to his feet again, falling twice in the process. "What eva' happened ta' us? We had a good thing goin' once..."

"There was no 'us', Understeer," Speedbreaker said firmly. Her optics still flashed with her rage at her youngling easily close to having been harmed. And instead of offering a hand to bot to get to his feet when he tried to once again and stumbled, she just left him there and walked back to her fiend and their children.

Because the drunken bot was very close to the public youngling playground of any place, and because he was clearly well past all hope of walking anywhere, Acree quickly decided quite wisely to notify the city's patrol. And just as soon as she had done so with her private commlink, she grabbed Speedbreaker gently by and arm, herding her and both younlings all together toward the walkway and downtown.

"He never meant anything to me," Speedy explained, though Arcee would never have asked, or judged her. The young bot was clearly both shaken up and still well beyond angry. And it showed in the tone of her voice. Pausing on the walkway, she picked up Hotwire, who was reaching up to her, and shook her head with frustration. "Understeer fancied himself our ship's mechanic... though the job more often began to fall to me. He used to sit in the engine room complaining over how a femmbot couldn't possibly work on the hardware of a starship, and were bound to crash. Then he'd flirt and ogle me like some pervert, and act like he was so fragging funny. My carrier finally got wind of it one day and he let him have it good."

A couple of patrollers approached the playground as the bots and their younglings made their ways further away from it. Speedy stopped a second to watch them hurrying down the road in vehicle modes. And she shook her head, mumbled under her intakes in a tone of disdain, "Some days it looks like this city is going right to the pit..."

* * *

When Firestrom woke from her recharge, she knew at once that she was not in her own room. Looking over at a window shaded with the darkest of green curtains, blowing lightly in a breeze right above a simple black shelving unit filled with perfectly stacked datapads, she blinked a second in confusion. Warm bedding was still pulled up tightly around her, and she blinked slowly at its colour, the darkest green, just like the curtains. Blinking yet again as she rolled over, she slowly remembered the night before.

She had crept quietly down the corridor to Soundwave's room a short ways from hers, because flashbacks of a bot in the sweet shop with his wandering hands and disgusting intent, had made her wake up cringing every time she'd tried hard to fall into recharge. He'd let her in and he'd talked with her. Of course he had... but she could remember so little after that. A processor reboot. Her condition seldom embarrassed her. After all, she could do little about it and emotions toward it all did nothing. But she was suddenly embarrassed then as she realized she had gone into reboot again, and sometime soon after she must have simply fallen into recharge, too tired to do anything but.

"Soundwave..." she started to question, when she didn't see him at first, and realized at the same time she was on the recharge station all by herself. But turning slowly the rest of the way over, she saw him sitting at his. His computer terminal was powered up and he typed commands onto a keyboard in front of him.

Firestorm pushed the covers off, and climbed slowly off the recharge station. Her walking frame was standing on the floor right by the side of the recharge station she had been on. But she left it where it was and made her way slowly across the room, as she usually did in small spaces, simply holding her arms out a little for balance.

"Good morning," Soundwave said, turning away from his work when she walked up behind him and stopped there.

"Ah'am sor'ry 'bout the..." she started to say, trying hard to apologize for her rebooting incident. She had never felt a need to be sorry to anyone else before. That was new. Tears of coolant came to her optics in under a second, and before she could help it. That was also new.

"Why are you sad?" Soundwave questioned, uncertainly.

"Ah'dunno..." Firestorm answered, unable to explain, because she truly didn't know for sure.

"Never be sad over rebooting," Soundwave said slowly. He reached up to wipe away a coolant tear from her face-plate, with enough uncertainty and awkwardness it almost made her laugh instead of crying. "Do not feel sorry either. Fault – not yours."

"Wat'are'yu workin'on?" Firestorm questioned with curious interest. Her bout of sudden tears ended just as quickly as it had began, and she smiled a little, sitting on the end of the recharge station, still close to where he sat working.

"I am scanning files found on the hard drive used on onboard the Nemesis," Soundwave explained slowly. He went back to his work for a moment, but then he turned again to look at her. And though his face-plate was covered as always, she could only imagine he was smiling at her. "I am... looking for any possible photofiles of myself that may exist." He turned back to the computer screen, and he went on speaking, quicker now. "Ratchet asked me for one, if possible. Said it will be easier to construct a new face-plate for me if he only had a decent idea of what I looked like before..." Hs words died out there entirely, and Firestrom stood up again, to stand behind him smiling in her understanding.

"Did'yu fine'one?" she asked. Her tone was upbeat and that was deliberate.

Firestorm admitted to herself that she was curious to see picture of him too, just to understand what he'd looked like once. And she knew he'd surely show her, if he found one. But as he continued to scroll through files she knew it was less than likely one actually existed. Such a situation was not uncommon considering the war.

"I didn't," Soundwave answered, confirming. And though he spoke as he most often did, in a even and low tone of voice, hints of his frustration and dismay showed through. "I had hoped to find a photofile from the fighting pits attached to my enlistment record... it's been so long since I've seen or even thought about it, I could not even remember if..."

"Ratchet will'do da'bess he can, ev'n withou' a'picture fa'reference," Firestorm assured him, with a much brighter smile.

"Soundwave," she said a moment later, when he said nothing in reply to her and she noticed just from the slumping of his shoulders, how tired he clearly was. She remember, vaguely, that he had lay down a while, not long after she had woken up from her reboot. She remembered the warmth of his frame as she lay tightly against him a while. But she'd too quickly gone right to sleep. "Did'yu recharge much'las'nigh'?"

"I did not," he admitted. And with a start, Firestorm understood at once, remembering.

"Ta'day is ya'second optic repair."

"Correct."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes/ I had hoped and planned to write longer chapters in this one. And Ive been trying to do so. But alas, this chapter is just little on the short side I think. Still, it feels complete, so I stopped. Thank you again for the lovely positive feedback I'm getting so far. I'm seriously learning to trust myself to write what I feel I want to write because even when I worry I either went to far with a scene or just plain got silly, I still get positive comments. I'm learning that readers like fluff, and they like a little dark or graphic and serious. I like both, and I like to write a decent mix, which is what It seems I've been doing with this one.**

The area surrounding the base of the largest sulfur mountain, was most often a windy place. Air currents descended fast, dropping over the distant cliffs and heated by a raging river of boiling oil and steam beyond that. And those currents crashed against the mountain and it's shorter neighbours, still supercharged from the heat with nowhere to go. The winds there howled and screamed, swirled and blew almost without end by virtue of the planet's geography and physics. The wind that blew there was, in general, an unusually warm one. But it was brought near impossible humidity, hot wet air whirring around in constant little whirlwinds, that stirred up the surface of the dusty ground, which would have caused constant dust storms had the dust itself ever been truly dry enough to fly for long.

Ratchet walked away from the ground bridge, and drove his vehicle form across the flat plain toward the highest of the mountains, through that endless wind. His tires slipped on the dust, and he struggled just to drive straight as a strong gust yanked his tail end to the left, and another not a second later yanked his front to the right. He transformed back to bot mode after that, and tried to walk as straight as he'd tried to drive. And the wind nearly knocked him flat to the ground more than once.

After a good while of struggling forward, and far from liking it, the old bot reached the mountain, which jutted up dramatically from the ground, at an immediately steep dangerous incline. And looking around him in the swirling wind he found the pathway he was looking for. It was burried under the dust just as well as onything else in that strange landscape. But still, he managed to identify a vague hint of hit, because he knew what it was he was actually looking for. Following the familiar path - made simply from the natural process of footsteps and tires moving over the ground in one place repeatedly over time – he came to a large sliding door, blended almost entirely into the surface of the sulfur mountain. A gust stronger than any before picked up, it seemed from out of nowhere. And Ratchet banged a fist against the heavy locked door, only hoping his banging might just be heard over the howl of wind all around.

His heavy knocks were greeted at first by nothing at all. And he tried again, just slightly louder, waited a few long moments, tried it again, and thought of turning around to leave . But still, he knocked again, just one more time, a few hard fast knocks. And finally he heard the distinct noise of loud footsteps, belonging to a very large and heavy bot, approaching the door from the other side of it.

"Your visit is once again unannounced, medic," Shockwave said evenly, revealed in the doorway as soon as the heavy door slid open.

"Well I can't exactly call and let you know I'm coming by," Ratchet chuckled under his intakes, mildly cautious as even in the face of a bot long known for being slightly less then predictable. "You've still got no comms set-up of any kind. You're unreachable out here all alone."

"That is still precisely as I like it," Shockwave retorted. He snarled frustration under his own intake, but all the same he extended a hand and gestured back into the living structure behind him, inside the mountain. "Come inside then. No logic in standing at the door while the entryway fills up with blowing dust.

Ratchet had been invited into Shockwave's home only a couple of times in the past several years since Shockwave's defection. And it had been a considerable amount of time since he'd last been there. Still, he remembered the place just well enough to be quite certain that not a thing inside the small and sparsely furnished living space had changed at all.

"Well then," the old medic said, with a chuckle of laughter and then a sigh. He opened his storage compartment and puled out a decent sized glass container, which he held out to his fellow bot of science. "A gesture of friendship!"

"What is it?" Shockwave demanded. He moved as though he was about to grab the container quickly, and quite possibly inspect the contents closer in his obvious suspicion. But he pulled his hand right back again instead, and just glared a moment with his strange single optic.

"Decent quality high grade energon," Ratchet answered. He set the contain down on a small worn out table, and realized only when he did, that the table could easily tip over and fall any time because of a couple of bent legs. He huffed loudly and chuckled again. "Well aged and flavoured with a good hint of refined cobalt and copper. Much better than that sludge so well known as 'homebrew,' among Decepticons."

Shockwave wandered toward a set of a few small cupboards low to the floor across the room. And he stood up again quickly holding a couple of drinking containers, With some clear hesitation, and in obvious suspicion that was surprising from him, he slowly poured drinks, offering one quickly to the old medic-bot.

"I will admit to liking this," Shockwave said slowly, after he'd taken a drink from his own container. "I am curious however as to where you might have found this. To my knowledge no decent high grade is sold on Cybertron to this day."

"This is one I made myself," Ratchet explained. And he chuckled again, reflecting out loud, "You're right I'm sure. Nothing truly decent yet. I've been approached recently, by a couple of the few bots who know anything of my still almost secret hobby of home brewing. They've suggested I might go commercial with it. Start up an operation slightly larger then a simple in-home set-up... make enough to sell a steady supply. I thought about it for all of a minute. This fragging city already has enough trouble all thanks to public drunkenness and easy access..."

"I see," Shockwave said back. The tone of his voice showed his complete disinterest in the city and anything that happened within it.

"I'd like to extend an invitation to you," Ratchet said after a moment. "To a party..." given Shockwave's well known disdain for anything outside his own work, he knew well that just to invite him at all was pointless at best, and potentially a bad idea at worst. But still he had to try because he had his reasons, as he always did.

Shockwave, quite predictably raised his head in near baffled surprise, as he took a couple of steps backwards. Slowly, in a tone of utter confusion and disdain he questioned in frustration "a party?"

"A small evening event for the hospital," Ratchet explained. He shook his head just a little, and chuckled again just slightly amused. "The whole thing was mostly Arcee's idea to start with. We've set the goal of setting up a youngling ward, a unit stocked with proper youngling sized equipment, lots of windows for light, a small playroom... Arcee suggested the event to simply stir up some interest, and gather public donations for a cause most will surely believe in." Ratchet paused a second, chuckling. "I gotta admit it's a pretty neat idea. There'll be some live entertainment... performance" opportunities for a couple of up and coming talents among the refugees. Anyone who's anyone in the new city will be there..."

"I do not attend parties," said Shockwave. His tone was even as ever. "Such events are a needless waste of energy and time – though I do agree that the final goal is logical." He took another drink from his container, and with some apparent hesitation, he spoke again. "You did not come here simply to invite me to this event of yours..."

"No, I did not," Ratchet agreed quickly. "I wished to update you on the status of the cybermatter project. It is still partly your own work after all."

"Your consideration surprises and confounds me."

"I'm ready to put the stuff into bot trials. We've seen it work before. And after a few years to perfect it far more yet, I think it's time we knew just what it can really do for our world."

"I can assume you've tested it well on scraplets..."

"Repeatedly. Though I can't say I've even become close to comfortable with the very thought of having those critters around, even an isolated few at a time for experimentation... The tests were stepped up, after I saw how cybermatter brought a bot back from immanent death by his own processor trying to destroy itself."

"Cybermatter was never intended to be a tool of medical science," Shockwave answered at once. And his tone was one of sudden anger now, and right out of nowhere at all. His rage lead him to bang a fist against the rickety table heard enough to set it wobbling, before he turned to glare down the medic, with his red optic flashing his disdain. Slowly he took one long step forward and growled, "it was constructed initially to be used as a weapon of war!"

"You knew what I was doing since the day you surrendered your part of the work," Ratchet argued back. But somehow, even in the face of such anger from such a large and known violent bot, he kept is cool perfectly. Slowly he moved to held both hands in front of him in a gesture of accent. "You always knew full well I was not exactly building weapons with it. Ever since the day an Autobot fell into that cybermatter pool, and not only survived but returned to life repaired of something I could never hope to fix, I saw potential that everyone had clearly missed!"

"That Autobot went on to quickly kill Megatron," Shockwave fumed, still glaring.

"Yes. And that ultimately led to an and end to the war!" Ratchet replied, shouting back now, if only to fully drive home his point. Shockwave had never exactly wanted a war at all. He wanted to fight for a faction perhaps far less than even Soundwave. They, like countless others had been forced into battle, at first with little foreseeable choice. The same was true for both sides of that war that nearly destroyed their own planet. "Centuries of endless battles. Younglings born only to be made soldiers figthing for a faction ebcasue we told them our own side was right. They never understood what they were even fighting for at all. And any my age had all but forgotten! I don't condone brutal killings and sneak attacks. I'm an autobot. Bumblebee sure as the pit would never condone it either. An act like that, was surely the most violent and brutal thing that young bot has ever done. But we could hardly just exist forever in this never ending energon shed as bots will little hopes of any true futures! And don't forget that Megatron did come back, even if he is in self imposed exile..."

Ratchet's tirade had grown louder and louder with ever word he spoke. But by the time he'd gotten to the very last sentence of it, his voice had dropped in volume until it was suddenly close to whispering. And anger greater than any he'd felt before in the entire course of the conversation flooded his processor, and his vision flashed a second into blackness because it it. Opimus Prime was offline, while Megatron, through some cruel twist of fate was still more then likely very much alive. The thought had come to him before. Of course it had. But he'd always managed time and again to stifle it under a flurry of his work. Suddenly he felt like smashing something, and through only his years of self discipline, he managed to force back his terrible resentment.

"You will need a bot to test the cybermatter on," Shockwave said. His voice was perfectly calm and even once again, and he spoke with obvious interest again in the original topic of discussion. His comment dragged the old medic back from his own sudden rage, and for that Ratchet was instantly relieved. "Surely no damaged bots have been left to live... with the exception of Knockout, and he was an unusual case."

"You truly have no idea..." Ratchet mused. Because Shockwave, who seemed to venture out into the city perhaps three times in a year for needed supplies, truly could not have known anything of the bots that lived there, most from ships filled with refugees. And he'd met only a tiny few of anyone at all, and them only because they happened to sell the goods he needed.

"I can only imagine you'll look for a profoundly damaged bot who will volunteer. It will be one who trusts you already," Shockwave said. His tone strangely, sounded almost slightly amused – if not at the same time doubtful. And slowly, his doubt turned to almost blatant mocking as he continued speaking. "You would never simply choose one from among your patient case load and leave them no choice... That is just not the Autobot way."

"No, it isn't," Ratchet agreed. He chose to brush off the mockery and completely ignore it. Slowly, he explained, "I haven't got a volunteer yet. But I have someone in mind."

"You will... keep me posted regarding your progress?" Shockwave questioned. And in his tone it was more than obvious just how much he was still invested in the project that he had once worked, if only because he truly was a dedicated bot of science, far more than he was ever the battle lusting killer that the war had tried to make of him.

"I will," Ratchet promised, nodding. And he paused then a second, finishing his drink before he went on. "I can however do you one better still. Come and work with me for at least a short while. Any day now, my own science laboratory will be competed. Work with me there like I once worked with you in yours. I have a young student who may well love the chance to..."

"I have no interest in working inside that place," Shockwave snapped, dismissing the offer at once. "No interest in deal with your student. I have work of my own. And with your working fully on the cybermatter project, I've been fully free to pursue it again."

 _Again?_ Ratchet knew by Shockwave's choice of a single word, that project he spoke of was in some way a familiar one.

"Shockwave," he demanded, fearing he understood before he even asked him about it. And he questioned to himself at the same time whether fear was really the right reaction to have if indeed he'd guessed right when he imaged exactly what 'work' his fellow scientific had spoken of. "What in Primus' name are you up to now!"

"I don't answer to you," Shockwave countered evenly. But still in his tone there was an unmistakable mix of mockery and pride. "My understanding of the entire of the war agreement, was that it gave us equality as Cybertronians. We are both just simple scientists now. Still, as a fellow in our field, allow me to show you my work."

Ratchet, stunned but certainly put well into his place, and feeling at once like indeed he might have overstepped in trying to demand a thing, followed Shockwave across the small room and to a closed door he had barely given a thought to before. The door slid open when the bots stood in front of it, adn Shockwave led the way through it and into a room beyond. This room, Ratchet saw at once, was much bigger in scale than the one they had stood in conversing and had just left. He realized, to his shock, that this one – clearly the primary scientific laboratory in Shockwave's mountain facility, had been dug under a large part of the mountain that stood high above them. He imagined then that the mountain itself was hollowed almost entirely inside to make way for the magnitude of Shockwave's work.

Leading away from the sliding doors, directly across the huge room and against the farthest wall, was a large computer set up. A deck, a chair, a couple of over sized monitors, and a keyboard to type on. That in itsef was hardly too interesting, and Ratchet's optics traveled away from that at once because of it. Quickly the old bot's gaze landed on a row of large tanks lining a wall, and then on the next row that lined the wall opposite. He counted fast in his head. Twenty in total. He counted again and realized, in his panic and excitement, and his shock he had miscounted. Twenty two. Eleven per wall. Yes that was right. And in each tank, filled to the top with blue glowing refined energon, floated a familiar shape, recognizable almost as a creature.

"Predicons!" Ratchet gasped. And he found that his fear of a moment before was replaced mostly by amazement. Still, this didn't stop him from falling nearly over his own feet, in a careless backward step as he spoke.

"The majestic species deserves the same chance as the rest of us to exist on this restored world," Shockwave replied. And the pride and conviction in his voice was more than obvious now.

* * *

"Cybershock," Arcee called to her youngling, who was at present, playfully skipping about on the rocky ground well past the edge of the city, and wandering steadily further from her carrier while she did so. "Stay close to me, please."

"Oh-kay Mama," Cybershock answered. And she hurried over quickly.

Reaching up happily to grab her carrier's hand in hers, she swung it back and forth while she rocked a little on her heels, growing restless in seconds of trying to stand in one place. Arcee chuckled, smiling down at her child.

"Mama... where's Daddy?" the little one asked, curious.

"Working."

"Did he have a 'mergency?"

"I hope not!'

"But Daddy's a medic... medics do 'mergencies!" Cybershock's tone was one that said so clearly that she thought she was right and could hardly see how she could just be wrong, at least partly.

"They do, yes," Arcee explained with a chuckle. And she laughed a bit more as she remembered quickly that she'd before, more then once to explain the very same thing. "But it's much more than that. He's probably filing data pads..."

"Sounds a bit boring..."

"It sure would be sometimes."

"Mama," Cybershock continued to rock on her heels, as she held her carrier's hand. "Who we waitin' for out here?"

"A very good bot I used to know," Arcee answered, still smiling. She looked out for a moment over the flat landscape and toward the jagged hills in the distance, watching for a ship that still showed no sign of approaching. "He once helped to lead the Autobot army. He taught me how to shoot straight...taught me that sometimes advantages in battle come from being small, if only I just kept on driving fast enough... Now he's coming home to Cybertron to be a police-bot."

""I'll get ta meet him soon?"

"You sure will."

"Hey.. Mama...?"

"Yes, Cybershock?" Arcee looked down again at her child, giving her her full attention, slightly ammused but mostly concerned, at the tone of nervous questioning she suddenly heard in the youngling's voice.

"Daddy told me dis morning, I'll be gettin' some new parts vewy soon..." Cybershock said.

"You will be indeed," Arcee answered, with some hesitation, which she tired hard to hide from her voice.

The process of rebuilding and upgrading a youngling bot's frame, was one that happened more than once in the lives of every young Cybertronian. Their processors developed and learned more and more in the way of movement and strength, and as they did so, little bodies wanted to do more and more. Joints and often entire limbs wore out rapidly in the process of all that. And besides younglings started so tiny, and frames themselves, of course did not get any bigger. Cybershock had replacement parts already – enough of them that the changes would replace about half of her frame in total, as was typical. And the parts were stored neatly and well oiled in Ratchet's workshop.

"You'll certainly be taller," Arcee explained, thinking with mixed emotions, of the lower legs that had been well constructed, with arms to match up perfectly in proportion. And she leaned down to pick the youngling up, a little sad as she did, at thinking of how soon the little one would be somewhat heavier, and therefore held and carried far less. She'd planned to explain it all, long before then. But she could never work out quite how exactly, and she felt silent relief at Knockout having brought the topic to the little one first. "You'll certainly be able to run faster... and jump a bit further..."

"Oh-kay," Cybershock said. And it was clear enough from her tone, and the easy shrug of her little shoulders, that she accepted the news just fine, at least in the moment.

"Look, Mama look!" she exclaimed a moment later, bouncing with excitement in her creator's arms. Cybershock pointed up into the sky in the direction of the far off hills. "A ship! A ship!"

The ship the youngling had spotted was a small sliver painted and heavily armoured scout craft. And it approached fast, swinging from left to right hard in well controlled wide motions, in order to slow it down as it come closer to the ground. Booster rockets activated underneath it, pushing the small ship up into the air just a little at a time and repeated in tiny busts as it continued to fall toward the planet. The youngling, still in her carrier's arm's, and clinging' now to her right shoulder panel in excitement, watched carefully as the ship went on descending. And only when it finally touched the ground a few hundred metres from them and perfectly safe, did she let out the intake she's been holding in. Arcee jogged quickly toward the ship, still carrying her child, as the ship's door slid open upwards at its front.

"Ultra Magnus!" she exclaimed to the large and mostly blue and white bot that stepped immediately from the ship. "Welcome home."

"Arcee," the newcomer answered civilly and polite. Her looked her over, with an expression of a bot who almost didn't recognize her at all. "You are looking well. A world now without war has been good for you."

"It's been good for us all," Arcee smiled, chuckling. "And thank you."

"I never thought I'd ever see the day. You, a carrier." Ultra Magnus was not a bot known to smile over much of anything, if in fact he ever did so at all. But he smiled then at the youngling in Arcee's arms, and the youngling happily smiled right back, waving.

"Her name is Cybershock," Arcee said proudly. "One of a couple of bots I love most in my life."

"My Mama says you here ta be a police-bot," Cybershock said, clearly more than delighted to speak to this new bot she was meeting only for the first time, just like she'd known him all her life. She paused for just a second and made a face of sudden disdain, before she exclaimed loudly before he could even answer to her first comment, "that's good news. Bots are saying the city is going right to the pit... prob'ly 'cause the cops are corrupt!"

"Cybershock!' Arcee exclaimed in shock. She turned a little, in embarrassment to look at the returned Autobot. And quietly she muttered, "I'm terribly sorry..."

"Intelligent kid you've got," Ultra Mangus replied. Somehow he was still no less than amused by the youngling, despite his well known reputation for a no nonsense attitude toward anyone.

"Thank you," Arcee said again, while she bent to put the youngling back down, standing, on the ground.

"I'd wondered as I flew closer to the planet, who it was that would come to meet me."

"I kinda volunteered," Arcee explained. She looked down at her youngling, gestured toward her a little with her optics and chucked again. "Well, we volunteered."

"Well then, thank you both. I've read in the report sent on ahead to me by Bulkhead that you are no longer officially an Autobot officer... Though from what I read it seems no one would ever knew the difference."

"I'm an early educator in the youngling centre. Doing a job I dearly love. But it's just so hard to ever think of trying to stay away from work on base. I served for centuries..."

"And you served well," Ultra Magnus said seriously. Once again he smiled at the youngling before he looked back up again. "I always was secretly just a bit disappointed that you never chose to join the wreckers. You were one bot I knew well could have done it easily. But still, no matter where you chose to serve, your spunk and your talents were wasted on the war. I suppose that`s true for so many Cybertronians."

"Yourself included in that, Ultra Magnus. You'll make a great head of the police force."

"Well," the large heavy bot actually chuckled just a little, once under his intake. "I always did say, if only to myself, that if ever this fragging war could hurry up and end before we were all destroyed, I'd enjoying trying my hand at law enforcement. I welcome the challenge."

"We could sure use your help," Arcee told him. She stood a moment on the rocky rough ground, just shaking her head. "Cybershock is right. The city's going right to the pit with violent crime and dangerous behaviour. She only said that because she hears all of us say it far too often, of course."

"You can give me the ground tour of this new city you're building soon enough," Ultra Magnus answered back. And he actually laughed just a little for a second time before he looked down again at the youngling. "First I'm pretty well convinced that Cybershock here would just love to see how my ship really works."

"Cooooooooooooool!" Cybershock yelled loudly in reply. Something she'd more than likely learned from Miko on their recent Earth visit.

"The... uh.. news is true then regarding Prime's passing?" Ultra Magnus stopped in the middle of walking back to his ship with Arcee and a very exited Cybershock hurrying behind him. And he looked down again, almost staring right at the ground, as he questioned.

"It is. He... he died a hero to his poeple. Not just Autobots but entire shiploads of refgees... The world has a real chance because of his selfless act."

* * *

"Hey, you alright?" Speedbreaker quiestioned. She came out of nowhere. Or at least it appeared so, as she had no been standing there a second before and suddenly she was. The medbay doors slid closed behind her though, and that make it more than obvious that she had walked out from inside.

"Fine, fine," Firestorm answered, quickly, looking up from where she sat, on a bench outside the medbay. "Ah'jus bit'tired..." Tired she knew was likely an understatement, she reflected in dismay, realizing she must have dropped, at least for a second, into light recharge while sitting alone on the bench. That, she realized quickly was exactly why she hadn't seen Speedbreaker until after she'd spoken.

"What brings you here?" asked Speedy after a second. She sat down next to Firestorm on the bench. And slowly her expression turned from light sparked to concerned. "You aren't in need of medical attention, are you?"

"Ah'waitin' fa'Ratchet..." Firestrom waved off the concern at once. "He 'call'd me in... says'he wan'ed ta'talk'ta mee...

"Did you get any recharge at all last night?" Speedbreaker questioned, concerned again. And Firestrom realized only then just how tired she must actually have looked.

"'Course'Ah did. Some enn'way..." she answered, still smiling despite her tiredness. "Ah'was awake alot, tryin'a help Soundwave... "He'ad a nigh'mare 'a'somethin.' Woke'up terrify'd but'did'nt ee'en ra'memba why. It.. it seem'd ah-kay, den it happned'gain... Does'n help'eitha dat he'jus had' he secon'ov'is, optic op'rations, jus' yes'ta'day..."

"The war for Cybertron broke so any of the bots that fought it," Speedy said. "Either faction. Doesn't matter. "You've heard Arcee talk a bit before about Knockout, and his constant flashbacks in recharge when they first started out together. And only recently she started the talk about a couple of her own... No one hears anything of this, so please, please don't say anything, ever. But 'Bee has the very same kind of trouble far more than a bot ever should..." She paused a moment, and sat leaning forward, hands resting palms down on her knees, and a sad, determined look on her face-plate. "There's no cure for the trauma of war, or of anything else in life at all really. And Soundwave's obviously terrible issue with medics are hardly a secret to anyone by now. That's only gong to make matters ten times worse. It's a terrible thing for a bot as young as you to deal with – especially when you do it by choice..."

"Yu' really'say all'dat 'cause Ah'm young? Or 'cause Ah'm damaged?" Firestorm asked, her emotions suddenly mixed entirely, and many of them seeming to conflict directly with others. She leaned forward on the bench herself, and though she did try hard to do anything but, she found herself beginning to glare with a sudden air of defiance. "Ah dun'tink Ah'm enn'y younger'tan yu. Jus' smalla!"

"Firestorm..." Speedy said, her voice quiet and the tone of it so clearly almost horrified. She reached a hand out toward the smaller bot, letting it rest finally on her right arm. "I didn't mean..." She paused for a long moment. And it appeared she was carefully considering exactly what it was she wanted to say. Finally, she spoke again, in a tone that was entirely respectful, through still so bluntly honest, in well known 'Speedbreaker fashion.' "Most of us will probably always want to protect you more than most other bots. Not because we want to, and not because we try. But because it's in our nature to recognize damage and... I'm not sure what makes it work. It just does I guess. I should not have said what I said, blamed and it on age, because you're right. It wasn't." She looked down then toward the floor. Her horrified expressed turned quickly to regret.

"Iss' a'righ," Firestorm said quickly. A little smile came to her face-place again and she fully meant it. Looking staight at the other bot, she understood that she too was tired, if not almost exhausted. Chasing her youngling would surely explain and excuse that. She had her own job still of course as well. And carrying not one newspark, but two of them on top of that? "Ah'tink Ah`get'it."

"So, why Soundwave of anyone?" Speedy's question was purely curious instead of asked at all in judgment. And Firestorm know that at once.

She just sat quiet a moment and then a moment more, thinking and thinking on how exactly she could answer that because she'd had to try before. Slowly she looked her fiend in the optic's and smiled, questioning back simply, "Why 'Bee fa'yu? Why Arcee an'Knockout... or ya creators?"

"The first thing Soundwave ever did, when I ran into him once on base for the first time, was scare me half to death. I'm sure he did it on purpose. The way he was behaving then... not like any normal bot would, and I couldn't ever put a finger on what it was so out of place. I used to think he was terrifying, and even now I'm not sure my opinion's honestly changed all that much in general."

"He'try'ta scare'mee too," Firestorm was quick to answer. And a smile came to her face-plate as she did. "Yea... he'did'it on purpose. 'Ah'geuss he'thoug'he had'ta. He's not'like otha'bots. Doesn'know'fully how ta'be... But'watchin'him tha'day, Ah'jus' thoug'he strong... beau'i'ful..."

"You really do know what you want," Speedy said slowly. And she smiled then with a look of understanding and realization. "You both do..."

Firestorm only nodded then in reply, smiling right back just as brightly as ever.

The medbay doors behind the bench and to the left, slid open again suddenly. And a bot that Firestorm thought she recognized as Ratchet's newest student stepped out into the hallway. To stop the door from closing again, he jammed it with his foot to hold it open.

"Firestorm?" he questioned carefully, looking right in her direction. And when she nodded confirmation, he continued on quickly. "Ratchet would like to see you now in his office."

"I guess I'd better get back to work," Speedbreaker said, standing up quickly.

Firestorm, grew at last slightly nervous, as she followed the medical student toward the small office close to the front of the medbay. Because of course she never did have a clue as to what it was she'd actually been called in for in the first place. And no bot liked to be summoned to medical.

She was surprised, when she finally reached the office – pushing her walking frame in front of her, while she walked beside the medical student – to find not only Ratchet inside, but Knockout and Bumblebee as well. Ratchet dismissed the student that had brought her in, with a second of casual discussion and a request for him to bring energon to patients on the ward. And then he turned slightly in the chair behind his desk, politely inviting Firestorm with a light wave of his hand, to step into the office. She sat down, with some growing hesitation, in the empty chair he gestured to in front of his desk.

"I asked these two to meet with us as well because I can guess you might just end up with questions for one of them, or both." Ratchet nodded toward 'Bee, sitting in a chair near the one she'd sat on, and Knockout, parked on his cart backed awkwardly into the only tight corner it seemed able to fit into.

"Wh... wha's happen'd?" Firestorm asked slowly. She struggled a bit more then she should have, with folding her walking frame to save space in the small office. She was downright nervous now and could not ever trying to hide it, as her processor cycled through too many possibilities and none of them good. Had she done something wrong – offended the medical team somehow? Was she sick? Had the damage done to her in the recent incident downtown done more harm than they'd first understood?

It was unlike her to jump so quickly to negative conclusions. And she had never been a nervous bot before. It had always been the very opposite, with her likely far too bold and overconfident for her own safely or good, given her admittedly severe degree of processor damage. Recent events had broken her trust, left her on edge and doubtful of so many things. She realized this for the first time then, and she knew she didn't like it.

"This is not about bad news," Ratchet said, with a hint of a smile on his face-plate. He must have sensed her fears at once, without a need for her to speak of them.

"Uh-kay," Firestorm said back, smiling just as much as she could and looking at him ready to listen.

"You're familier with the cybermatter project?" Ratchet questioned. And Firestorm nodded at once.

"'Course Ah'am!" she said, excited now just to talk important matters with accomplished bots who clearly had no doubt at all that she could keep up. "Da'buildin' blocks of'bot'life...Tha'on'ly reason'Knockout still'ere at'all, An'Ah know it'all start'd wit'Bee in some final'battle tha' end'da war..."

"Cybermatter is ready to go into trials by this time," Ratchet said, nodding at her answer. "We're ready to see it do the things it was meant to do when I first started my work with it... to do the things medical science simply can't do on it's own. To offer one last hope of life, or quality of life to bots beyond other means."

"Ya'tol me'once ya'could'neva' fully'fix me," Firestorm said, only guessing that may have been the direction the old bot was going in next. And she smiled at him in acceptance as she said so, because the fact had never bothered her. Ratchet had done the very best he could with her... had given her rehabilitation enough to build coordination she never knew she had – climbing on a ladder or carrying multiple objects very far at all, would never have been possible without that work. He'd built her walking frame for her, giving her speed and confidence, letting her walk with self assurance when she knew she wouldn't fall to the floor when she stumbled in her steps – and he'd even painted it yellow to match her own paint, something that had made her laugh from the start. He'd explained one day after he'd met her that that was about the most he could ever do. And she'd understood at once, grateful he'd looked her case over at all, because that was far more then she;d ever thougtht to hope for once.

"Ah'm still uh-kay wit'tat." she said after a second, and with a smile. Because she truly was.

"I'm not," Ratchet answered firmly. And the tone of his voice was one of obvious determination. "Not when I think I could be so much better. Not while I feel we might have another option for you now."

Firestorm sat in her chair, looking intently at the old bot while he went on speaking. "We've seen what cybermatter did for both Bumblebee and Knockout. I've seen it work time and again on damaged simply lifeforms with ninety-five percent success and a percent injury rate. We're ready to move on.. to let it do what it does working with a patient in a situation that's not life or death, and wasn't an accident."

"An'Ya'd wan'ta test 'it'on mee?" Firestorm asked as understanding came to her at once.

Her spark pounded with her mixed feelings about that as soon as she saw the old bot nod in confirmation. A chance at being 'normal' when she could barely remember what had been before her youngling-hood accident. She imagined for the first time that she might really run, standing in one place fully unsupported as long as she wanted to, or even simply pour energon from one container to the next without spilling it constantly everywhere. She thought too that perhaps she could speak out loud just as she still heard her own voice in her head, as understandable as any bot's was. She let herself wonder for the first time since she was still a youngling, just what it might be like to comment on the simplest thing in conversation to a stranger, and not hear them quickly laugh in surprise in her face-plate.

But there were other feelings too about it. And those came fast behind the first. What if the whole thing failed. She supposed quickly that would hardly be so bad. She'd been right back where she was right now and of course that was simply her. But it could all be worse. Could she be the one that was finally harmed, or killed? What if it really did work out as well as anybot could hope for, only for her to realize that with damage caused while she was still young, damage that had effected the way bots interacted with her and therefore her social development, meant it was too late to truly be like others? She asked herself lastly if 'normal' was truly overrated. Her thoughts went at once to Soundwave. And she knew full the bot she loved was mostly fine with being far away from 'normal,' and she wondered why she wanted it herself all of a sudden when she'd never before cared that she could never be like other bots.

"The choice will be yours of course," Ratchet explained, though she knew from the start it went Without saying. "I don't want to pressure you in any way, or make you believe you have to do this. You absolutely don't."

He smiled at her again in assurance, and looking around the room, she saw the other two bots smiling calmly too.

"Wha'wass it'like fa'both' off'yu?" She asked slowly, looking from Bumblebee toward Knockout and back again. She understood fully now, why Ratchet had asked those two bots, of any of his growing medical team, to meet with them.

"I'm afraid I'm not much help," Knockout said. He chuckled a little under his intakes. But it was obvious both in his tone of voice, and in the way he sat, slightly stiff and rigid on his mobily cart, that he'd been triggered at least a little into anxiety as he answered anyway. "I'd lost so much of my own awareness by that point. I was still conscious, or at least sort of so. But reality made no real sense... there was jumbled noise that I only later understood had been speaking voices nearby." He shook his head, clearly trying to shake off baffled confusion, and a very bad memory. He turned slightly though a second later, so that he could look Firestorm in the optics. And he smiled assurance. "I can tell you for sure, there was never pain. Eventually just... calmness and warmth – though those things only made sense again later."

"I remember, I was falling, knocked from a railing after a shot to the chest panel by a high powered blaster," Bumblebee said, when Knockout stopped speaking. He sat forward in his chair with an intent look on his face-plate and clearly tried hard to remember details and put it all together in his processor when he'd never been asked to before. "I was falling and falling and then the pain finally registered. Soon thouhg, as soon as it seemed it has started, the pain as just... gone. But I was still falling. Or at least it felt like I was. I knew I'd hit the cybermatter pool below me, but it felt like I fell right through it. It was... bright. It was silent. Everything finally got warm... just like Knockout said." He paused again, clearly baffled, before he added slowly, "Next I knew I was standing back up top, near where I'd started out with no idea how I got up there or why I wasn't dead."

"'Bee's accident was just that," Ratchet said, smiling assurance of his own as his optics met firestorm's next. "An accident. It would of course be much different for you. Much closer to Knockout's experience, but even that not quite so much. This would be a very controlled experiment... monitors in use, safety measures in place. And there's no rush at all for you to agree if in fact you do at all." The old bot paused then, with his hand up or emphasis on his next words. "In fact, I would like you to wait at least a few days before you make a decision at all. Take the time to really think it all over."

* * *

"Soundwave," Firestorm called, banging cheerfully on the door of his room, down the hall from hers. Her processor spun with her excitement as she knocked again just a second or two after the first time. She had no much to tell him. She hoped he'd be happy... she imagined he would be...

"Soundwave!" she called out again when there was no answer, and the door didn't open.

She pushed a little on the edge of the door, where it slid into the wall on its track. And to her surprise and relief, it slid open, unlocked.

"Ah'jus come'back'from Ratchat's office," she said, stepping into the room, pretty sure he wouldn't mind. "Ah'got news, Soundwave. Tis'coul'bee amazin'!"

Firestorm realized only then that she was speaking very loudly. And she fell silent at once, when she realized that Soundwave could in fact be recharging, still recovering from his very recent repair. She turned slowly to face toward the recharge station, and thought she might just rest with him awhile. She wondered now, just how well he could see, of at least how well he would once he woke up again. She remembered Ratchet assurance that they would know by the end of that day just how much he would be able to.

But he was not laying on the recharge station, as she'd quickly convinced herself he would be. And her spark dropped then with concern over something not quite right.

"Yu'in'ere?" she called out around the small room hopelessly, and well aware that her muddled voice was far more so in her concern. She turned, pushing her walking frame in front of her, and carelessly she bumped its little wheels against the legs of the recharge station.

"Firestorm," Soundwave's voice fianllt called back to her, from inside behind the half closed door of the wash station – a place that had not even occurred to her to check. And he voice sounded so different than it seemed it always did. "Please... go away!"

"Wha'?" Firestorm questioned at once. And boldly she took a quick step toward that half closed door instead of away from it. Her hands were off the frame's bars at once, and instead she used the door to hold her balance. "Why'go'way? No... Ah'won't."

"Go away. Go Away!" Soundwave screamed in sudden anger when she took another tiny hesitant step forward, trying hard to hold her balance while she peeked around the wash station door.

She saw one of his long and twisting cables before she was close to seeing him. It shot past the door out of what seemed like nowhere, striking her against the front of her body. He'd not sent any current through the cable. And it had not hit her very hard at all. But with her terrible lack of balance and her hands off her walking frame, it was just enough to make her fall anyway. And she stumbled backwards horribly, landing on her back right in front of the recharge station, and close to having hit her head on the base of it. Still, she believed at once he hadn't exactly wanted to hurt her.

"Soundwave," she said, her tone demanding now, firm and serious, though shaky from the sinking of her spark. She slowly got herself up from the floor, first into her knees, then finally to her feet. And she took a few awkward and stumbling steps again toward the wash station door.

"Ah... Ah'cant'go 'way. Not wen'Ah know some-ting 'realla'wrong..."

"Firestorm," Soundwave answered, and his voice shook horribly by then with shaking sobs of pain and despair. "Please... just... leave..."

"Ah'gonna comm'Ratchet..." Firestorm answered, still not even thinking leaving as her asked her to. Something was very wrong and she sensed that more than ever as she reached up to her personal commlink. She certainly had heard Soundwave cry like that before – but only in the height of his fast forgotten nightmares.

"No. No, don't," Soundwave said inside the wash station. And it sounded as though he was clearly trying hard just to stop his helpless sobbing then.

"Talk'ta mee," Firestorm begged firmly, deciding at least for the moment to give him a chance to refuse medical care on his own. Quickly though she stepped around the wash station door, to find him strangely sitting on the floor near the shower, hands over his head and still crying horribly.

"Come'on," she said softly, sliding down to sit beside him carefully on the floor. She put her head on his knees and tried hard to grab on of his hands, but he refused to let her. "Wha' Happen'd?"

"Wait..." she whispered, mostly thinking out loud just a moment later, when he still didn't answer her and had only started to cry so hard again and his body shook from it.

Firestorm, simply trying her best to hug the bot who wanted to push her away, to grab his hands when he only wanted to pull himself back tight as he could against his wall to stop her trying, had sat back up again on the floor. And when she had, her optics had come to rest on the back wall of the shower enclosure, with its shiny chrome back splash behind it and wrapped around to the edges. She looked around the wash station quickly then, with her spark sinking. And it dropped clean to her tank when her optics landed next on the face-shield, which lay discarded carelessly on the shower stall floor.

She felt her tank flip hard. Thought she might purge it then as she remembered that he could in fact probably see now, and well enough to see himself in the shiny chrome of the wall. She remembered to her own despair and horror, that he had never seen himself or his own damaged state since it had all happened centuries before.

"Get'up," she said slowly, firmly but patient and she tugged gently on his arms, well aware of just how little she could help him then if he would himself. She thought again of comm'ing for help. But then just as quickly, she dismissed the idea. He was hurt, ot at least it didn't seem so. Just upset more than anything "le'ss go'ta da recharge station..."

To her relief he stood up slowly to follow her when she yanked lightly on his arms a second time. Leaving her walking frame where she'd let go of it near the wash station door, she walked with him across the room.

"Firestorm..." he said, sitting down slowly on the edge of his recharge station. And he paused for a long moment, while he just stayed where he was, looking shaken and shaken and finally horrified. "I didn't mean to hit you... I would never... I would never..."

"Ah'kno dat!" Firestorm replied at once. And she smiled as she jumped up quickly onto the recharge station herself. "If Ah'd tot yu'ment ta, Ah would'ha left like'yu toll'me ta..." She let her words die out abruptly in the air. And for a while she just sat beside him, making it clear even in her silence, that she was still not leaving, even if he told her to again – which he didn't

"Are yu uh-kay?" she asked after long moments had passed, his crying had stopped, and his frame was no longer shaking from his panic and grief. Slowly she moved, so that she could lay on the recharge station he sat on the edge of, and rest her head on his lap while her hands reached for his. She sighed with relief when this time he took them at once.

"It...it was always impossible... in my own processor... to fully form an idea of what I must look like," Soundwave said slowly. His speech made perfect sense, but still it was clear from the tone of his voice and the slowness of the words, that he was in fact struggling again just to keep the words in order. I knew it was... terrible... I knew well I had barely survived once... and that should say enough. Firestorm... how... how can it not matter, at least to you?"

"Ba'cause it'doesn'" Firestorm answered simply. She knew full well that answer was hardly an answer at all. But it was by far the best one she could think of, at least in the moment.

"The bot who once destroyed my face-plate in the arena..." Soundwave said still slowly and with a great amount of hesitation. Firestorm just stayed where she was when he paused a long while, waiting to see if he would continue on. And very slowly, he did so. "One night... a couple of days before the fact... he returned to the dormitories drunk enough to stumble over his own feet. Many liked to drink on nights they did not fight... and some on nights they did. But... he was far worse off than most I'd seen before. He came inside... and though I don't know even now why it was me he picked on... we soon began to argue. Many saw and heard but none stepped into to become directly involved. It was simply the way of things. And after a moment of that, he shoved me hard against a wall. He growled in my face-plate that I was just 'too pretty' for the pits... and he said that would be the reason I would one day die there... I did not know what he meant by that. Thought it meant nothing at all. He was drunk and falling over... When I fought again him next I was certain I could win. I'd beaten him twice before and I was long undefeated. I learned too late that all along he'd had a plan..."

"Ratchet still'say'ya face-plate is'fix-a-ble," Firestorm reminded him. And she looked intently at his optics as she did, smiling when she saw that the finally glowed witht he red they should have been instead of their muted light pink. She moved just a little, getting comfortable again, and she smiled brighter when, obviously without even a thought, his optics followed her in doing so.

"We'll never get back to what I once was," Soundwave answered, clearly still so sad and defeated as he spoke. "I thought at first... it didn't matter to me when I couldn't find a reference picture..."

"Course it'mattas," Firestorm replied in understanding. "Yu wan'ta look like yu, as yu know it... ever'one does." She lay still for a long moment on Soundwave's recharge station, with her head still on his lap, and her hands in his, thinking.

"Knockout can'draw ver'y'well," she said after a long moment more. "Yu'shopuld talk'ta him awhile some'time. Rememeber yu'as'yu once were. See'if he'can'git it'righ'on'his drawing screen..."

"I will... talk with him," Soundwave said softly. Slowly, he blinked his optics, and he let gone of one of Firestorm's hands so that he could wipe helplessly at the tears that had fallen onto his face-plate.

"What did you come to tell me?" he asked, after a moment. Firestorm only shook her head in reply.

"Is'not 'im'por'end righ'now."

"It is to me," Soundwave insisted, and his tone said that he meant it entirely. "Tell me what it is that made you so happy. And I can be happy along with you."

"There'is..." Firestorm mumbled, smiling at him. "There'is some'chance'Ah fix-a-ble'tooo."

 **Notes/ The last Soundwave and Firestorm scene was so sad to write, but I feel like I did my best with it and of course it's a very important scene I felt I had to get right. Soundwave is one of a few characters I find tricky to write, even if I'm not writing from his perspective. But he's also an interesting character to write too, and I've realized how much I like to try just to get him right.**


	4. Chapter 4

"Daddy," Cybershock said, as she looked up at her carrier, from her place sitting in his lap, while he sat on his mobility cart. Little coolant tears appeared suddenly in the corners of her optics, and she sniffled loudly, making it clear in doing so that she was trying hard not to cry. "I don't think I ready ta do dis ta-day..."

"It's okay, my girl," Knockout said slowly, hugging his youngling closer against his frame as he looked around the medbay with growing unease he hid from the little one.

"No it not!" Cybershock answered loudly and fast. The tears she'd fought back so hard spilled over the edges of her optics. And her head dropped, to rest against the front of his frame.

Knockout was sitting still, close to the back of the medbay underneath an open window high above. But his left hand went at once to the hand control of his cart anyway. And slowly, carefully, he bumped the control back and forth with his hand, causing the machine to roll backwards and forwards just slightly, just as he had so often done with his youngling when she was still younger, and he was disabled enough that he could do so little else for her.

He thought a moment, while he looked up toward that little open window above and rocked with his child on the cart, of times a few years before. The youngling who so seldom cried and fussed at all would cry at random, in the middle of the day, and for no clear reason at all. And Arcee - flustered after she'd tried everything they could think of together and to no avail - would plop her down onto his lap, with no place left to put her. He'd rock her slowly, because what else could he do, while he held her just as well as he could so as not to let her fall. And of course she would stop her crying because it seemed quite clear she'd simply missed him and wanted to rock like that with him awhile.

"Daddy," Cybershock said, wide optic'd and slow, blinking back more tears., and still not lifting her head. "I'm... afraid..."

She genuinely was. That was all to obvious in the stiffness of her tiny body, from the moment she'd scrambled helplessly up onto his lap a while before. The youngling, who the whole Autobot team so often joked was not possibly afraid of anything, who was in generally far too bold for even her own safely or good, was almost trembling from anxiety.

"I know, my girl," Knockout said gently. He moved his left hand, still the just slightly the weaker of the two, away from his hand control. And gently he placed its fingertips in his child's little hand. With the right hand he moved to gently touch the top of his little one's head piece. The youngling's tiny hand held tight to his at once. But slowly her optics half closed and fewer tears spilled out from either one of them. "What is it you're so afraid of?"

"Whole parts... dis... dis-con-ect-ed...," Cybershock slowly tried to use the word she'd heard her creator use days before. And it was a very big word for a very small youngling, to even try to get right. She looked back up at him, optics open wide again. And she cringed a little before more tears fell. "I think that might hurt!"

"You will be powered down," Knockout reminded her as he smiled his assurance. "You won't feel anything."

"Wass it like to be power-down?" Cybershock asked. She was asking questions now. Trying hard to understand. And that was good.

"Just like recharging," Knockout answered quickly. And he kept his hand where it was, resting gently on the top of her head piece, rubbing it lightly because she whimpered slightly in panic as soon as he tried stopping. "And of course you do that every night."

"I wish I was more like you. You not afraid of anything..."

"You're wrong about that," Knockout admitted slow, still comforting his child all the while. And he silently remembered so many times of his own weakness and terror. "There are a few things I'm afraid of. I might in fact just be scared of way more than you are."

"Where's Mama?"

"She's talking with Ratchet and 'Bee in Ratchet's office. She'll be right back."

"You sure she coming right back?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"Do I have ta do dis taday?" Cybershock asked, a tiny moment later.

"Yes. You certainly do," Knockout answered calmly as ever. But he smiled a little at his child as he answered. And thoughtfully he added, "best, don't you think, to get this over today? Then you won't need to be afraid anymore."

With her little body still pressed tight against her creator's armour, and her tiny hand still holding tight to his fingertips, Cybershock appeared to consider for a second, and then for another. Slowly, she nodded her head just a little.

"Good little bot," Knockout said quietly. He smiled his assurance again, even though she clearly she not exactly see him do it while her little blue face-plate was against his armour plating.

It was probably no secret to anyone, that he had once never planned on creating a youngling at all It wasn't that he'd ever exactly disliked them per say. How could he dislike them when until still recently, he hadn't even seen a youngling bot since he was nearly still one himself. It was more that he had his own ambitions to pursue, and that had once meant everything. But he'd loved Cybershock more then he loved any ambition he might have had, from the second she was born. That was hardly a secret to anyone either. And to see his youngling cry, to sense her panic in the way her hand held onto his, it made his spark drop.

"Cybershock, look," he said slowly, turning his head to look toward the door of Ratchet's office, as it slid open once again across the medbay. Gently, by tugging a little with the hand she still clung onto, he tried to coax her into lifting her head to look for herself. "Mama's back."

"That works just as well for her as it always did for you," Arcee said, in hushed tones. She gave a tiny little, though clearly anxious laugh, and gestured with her optics toward Knockout's right hand, which still brushed gently against the little one's head piece.

"Yeah," Knockout answered back slowly and quiet. He remembered then, the endless nights wide awake with his bondmate after hours it seemed of endless horrid nightmares.

Sitting down in a chair she quickly pulled over from nearby so that she could easily be at their youngling's level, Arcee moved to gently hold onto the little one's free hand, which was at present, shoved tightly between her own frame and her creator's. With a slight dismayed shake of her head she mumbled sadly, "She was just fine not long ago. She's just not a happy little girl right now..."

"She got a bit upset not long after you left," Knockout explained, still gently comforting the youngling. "It quickly got worse. The reality of why we're here is catching up to her now.."

"Mama..." Cybershock whined lightly, and she listed her head for just a second from agaisnt her creator's frame, to look at her with teary optics

"Frame upgrades are usually pretty horrible with bots this young," Ratchet explained, walking over quickly to stand near the pair with their child. He carried a tool kit with him, from somewhere inside a cabinet, and grabbed presumably on his way over. And he set it down on a work table nearby, next to a repair table the little bot would eventually be moved on to. The rattling noise it made clearly scared the youngling, because she began to whimper and cry louder again. "It's a bit of a very necessary evil, I'm afraid."

Ratchet kneeled on the floor beside the beside the youngling on her creator's lap, for a moment. And he grinned a silly grin at her, while he gently shook her arm. So clearly, he was trying hard to make her laugh, or at least smile a little. But even then, the usually so happy small youngling would have none of it at all.

"She won't remember this forever," Bumblebee pointed out helpfully. He hurried over to the group, and stood to one side, so obvious by the uncertain look about him, that he was still trying hard just to be of use instead of in the way. "Think about it. Do any of us remember our first upgrades?"

"'Bee," Ratchet said almost in the very same second. And the young student looked in his direction at once, optics intent and paying obvious attention again, as Ratchet fell quickly into teaching mode. "What we need to do now is attach her to a simple energon line. We can use that in a minute for the medication I mentioned in the office." The old medic paused then, still kneeling on the floor, and looked intently at the youngling bot again. Finally he continued on, with compassion, "We'll leave her right where she is for the moment, in Knockout's lap. I think this is working. Her little frame is so small... we want to use equipment in the smallest size possible..."

"Na'uh.. I... I... no..." Cybershock said mumbled into her creator's plating before ever that simple language dissolved into wordless and loud whimpering.

"Cybershock," Arcee said firmly. Her hand still held her child's smaller one. But the other moved to hold the shoulder panel of the little one's other arm gently. "Remember your words, baby."

"...Gonna hurt me?" Cybershock managed to verbalize, just enough of her question that it made sense after more mumbling.

"Just for a second my girl," Knockout said slowly, not willing to create a new set of problems by lying to her, while his youngling clung harder to his fingertips, and she lifted her head now, looking all around the medbay with wide open optics quickly filling up with tears again. "That's the only bit of pain you'll feel. Promise. Look at Mama, okay?"

"Ouch!" the youngling screamed loudly. And immediately she was fighting so hard to pull away while Ratchet tried to attach the line to her upper arm. And he struggled harder himself because if it, clearly causing him to inevitably hurt her worse.

"No no. Hold still," Knockout told his youngling. He wrapped an arm round her little body, pulling tighter against him in an effort to keep her from moving "You're making it harder by moving too much. Keep holding our hands. Good little bot..."

"Ratchet," he heard Arcee say over his own words to the little one. And it was sadly obvious from the tone of her voice that her own spark was breaking for their child, even as she tried to hide her own despair. "Couldn't you do that once you've got her already into power down...?"

"That won't work unfortunately." Knockout answered her himself, to allow his fellow medic to keep on working as quickly as possible. Cybershock, much to his sparkbreak, gave a loud shrieking scream. "She needs the medication first. Get her good and calm and sleepy, otherwise she'd likely panic and fight hard against a power down. That could be just as horrible for her..."

The child may have been struggling, and putting up a good fight – though her creator's words of patient encouragement did seem, thankfully, to make her squirming just a little less, and she was pressing her tiny frame against his, instead of struggling to wiggle away, as he'd feared she may have done. But the old medic was well experienced in doing exactly what he did. And he'd managed to work fast despite the struggling of a youngling so clearly unhappy with him. Quickly, he got up from his position kneeling on the floor

"Are we..." Cybershock started to ask through loud sniffles. "Are we done?"

"All done, my girl," Knockout answered. He shifted her body carefully on his lap, so that she sat now facing mostly forward, her little legs dangling over his bent knees. And with the hand she was not immediately trying to grab for again, he pulled her tight against him. "Sit back. You're doing so good."

"I'm sorry I had to do to you that, missy," Ratchet said, speaking to the still sniffling little one. He leaned forward to look her in the optics, and he studied her a moment with an intent expression, before he turned away to give her medication through the energon line. "Think you can forgive me? We still gonna be friends?"

"Yeah," Cybershock said though sniffles. And she sat looking up and pouting with her head on her creator's shoulder panel. "But I still mad at you!"

"You'll start to get a bit sleepy now.," Knockout told his child, chuckling – however nervous – at her answer to the old bot, in spite of himself. "You're okay. Do you want to go to your Mama? Do you want to stay with me? Or, do you want to lay down?"

"I wan' Mama," Cyberhsock answered slowly, after she'd appeared to sleepily consider for a second. She was calmer now.

"Okay," Arcee said, standing up to lift the youngling into her arms, before she carefully back down with her, in her chair, and clearly mindful of the energon line. The youngling's optics half closed again, as she lay in her carrier's arms, reaching again for a hand to hold onto. "Just hold still now."

"Mama?"

"What it is, baby?"

"I dun' wike tiss. Feel wierd... scary..."

"It's okay, Cybershock," Arcee answered quickly. And her voice was still calm, but Knockout saw her dread and despair easily regardless. And he reached out to grab her free hand quickly. "Ratchet is going to power you down now. Later tonight, We'll have you a surprise, okay?"

"And... that's that!" Ratchet exclaimed, backing up from where's he'd been just a second before, leaning over the little bot in order to complete her power down sequence. He turned quickly to look in the direction of his young student. "Get her ready, laying flat, at our repair station..."

"Knockout," Arcee cried, as soon as her young teammate had taken the youngling from her gently. She stood up quickly from her chair. And to Knockout's dismay, his so typically collected bondmate burst promptly into coolant tears as she threw her arms around his upper frame. "That was... absolutely horrible."

Knockout simply hugged her close against him, because he could not think of much else to do. And silently he agreed with her entirely.

"Remember before our little one was born?" he said when his mate finally looked back up again. "We talked one morning in our room. You worried you just couldn't love her enough, because you'd never learned how..."

Arcee nodded slowly, and still she looked sad. "It was so silly to think that once."

"You could have had her connected to a line and ready for power down, while I was still in my office with Arcee," Ratchet softly admonished, shaking his head just a little, as he set about sorting tools in a usable order on his little work table.

"I... I'm afraid I don't quite trust the steadiness of my hands for that," Knockout answered, too quickly and he knew it.

"Your hands are plenty steady enough," Ratchet huffed. "We both know it." But he turned away from his work a second, and looked back with understanding on his face-plate. "The only trouble is that she's your baby."

"I just can't be the bad guy," Knockout said. And he smiled a little when Arcee lifted her head again to look at him. "I couldn't stand the thought of hurting her. Even if I could have been quick about it."

#####

He sat a short time later, parked on his cart with his back to the wall of a small waiting area, made cozy with well matched benches fitted with light neutral coloured cushions, data pads for causal reading, and a large window looking out to the street beyond the courtyard. Arcee sat beside him, on the far end of a padded bench, with her optics staring down toward the clean white floor.

"Hey," Knockout smiled assurance as he gently grabbed his mate's hand in his, and shook it gently to make her look at him. "Cybershock is fine. Frame upgrades are really nothing to write home about."

"I know," Arcee answered, smiling a little, before she shook her head, dismayed and sad again. "But... she still seems so little. I can't believe this day actually came so fast."

"Life moves fast when everyday is about more than endless warfare," Knockout pointed out. Because he'd quickly come to notice it himself.

"We've all survived our frame upgrades," Arcee mused, still shaking her head. "I know that. Though I don't remember many of mine at all..."

"Same for me," Knockout answered her. And he laughed out loud then as he added seriously, "though my own creators never did grow tired of telling the story of how I actually punched a medic in the faceplate, on the day of my very first one." He paused a second, thinking, before he added slowly, "...The series of a events is quite lost in endless repetition by now, but this may have been not long after I kicked her... twice." Arcee laughed then - though the look on her faceplate made it instantly clear that she questioned whether she should have been laughing at all over such a thing. And Knockout smiled slightly as he went on with his musing. "Of course, Cybershock would never even think to behave that way. We're doing a far better job with her than my creators ever did with me, if I may say so."

He saw his mate open her mouth, just as though she was going to say something. But she didn't, and for a second both of them just sat, silent and reflecting.

"What are you thinking about?" Arcee questioned slowly, after a while. And Knockout knew she'd clearly seen the sad uneasy look, he'd tried hard to hide the very second it had appeared on his face-plate.

"Nothing really," he quickly lied. And instantly he saw her shake her head, dismayed.

"It doesn't look much like nothing..."

"I understand just how it is for little bots and frame upgrades. Her body just won't work quite right at first... Yes, I know she'll pick it up again fast and be walking by tomorrow, and running in no time. But still... being me and knowing exactly what it's like to think my own body should work as I think it should... when it just doesn't..."

"I think..." Arcee answered slowly. And she paused in mid statement, contemplating a moment before she finally finished her thought. "I think all that makes you the perfect bot to help her later."

"Uh... excuse me..." said a young bot from the the hallway and just around the corner. The bot peeked quickly around the archway leading into the small alcove of the waiting area, and with a nervous look he stepped in. Knockout was sure he recognized him after a second, as one of the group of three new medical students to have arrived still recently. He'd met him so far only twice in passing. But the young bot did certainly seem to be a nervous fellow.

"I.. I... Um... Ratchet sent me..." the student stammered, and he fidgeted with the finger tips on his right hand. And his optics, though darting around the room a bit too much, looked otherwise in Knockout's direction. "An... an emergency just came in, needs to be seen right... right away, and he's still busy with your daughter..."

"It sounds like you had better go," Arcee said. Her look was sad, but at the same time understanding.

"I ready did want to stay with you and wait..." Knockout looked for a moment at his bondmate, regretful. But she only smiled her assurance.

"Hurry," she said firmly, holding his fingertips for just a second before she let go again. "Somebody needs your help."

* * *

"Knockout," said the medical student, who had come to fetch him. "I... I'm sorry to have called you away from... from your family. Today is your youngling's frame upgrade and..."

"Stuff happens," Knockout answered quickly. "You'll learn fast in this field, that on call means 'no mercy.'" He rolled the cart at a decent pace for an indoor space, beside the young student, from the place he had met him, close to the medbay doors. He tapped his right fingertips lightly against his arm rest as he rolled forward, just trying hard to recall the bot's name. And he wondered if he'd ever learned it yet at all. The student really was close to brand new. "So, what's the deal?"

"A bot managed to walk in on his own, bleeding energon badly from his right shoulder," the medical student explained fast. And he kept up his hurried walking. "He's in a bad state. Aside from the shoulder, he's got head to foot dents, and may well have cracked his head somewhere."

"What happened to him?"

"I... I honestly have no idea. He wouldn't tell us anything."

"Head to foot dents? Could have been a fight..."

"I asked him if someone beat him up," the student answered, as the pair approached the medbay doors. "He said he didn't know, and then he lost consciousness."

"Alright." Knockout pulled a quick intake of air into his system, and steered the student gently toward the doors as they slid open in front of them. The young bot may well have been the newest of he students. But some help was better than none, and he knew well he might just need it.

"It's the... guy right over there," the medical student said, pointing toward a bot laying on a repair table at the right hand side of the room. And Knockout resisted the urge to shake his head at that, because of course, aside from Ratchet and his team, who were working at present in a curtained off section of the far back wall, the medbay was otherwise empty.

"Sorry," the student muttered a second later. And clearly he'd recognized the ridiculousness in his statement of the obvious.

The injured bot, Knockout saw as soon as he rolled close to the repair table, was still very young. An adult likely. But still just barely so. And he was, sure enough, bleeding energon from a gash clean across the front of his right shoulder panel. It was bad. One fast glance was enough to be certain of that. Energon had soaked the entire upper arm, and the top of the table the bot lay on, but Knockout managed to catch a reflection of the overhead lighting against what could only have been the bot's inner structure, beneath the gash.

The bot, covered in head to foot dents, and scuffs, just as had been described, was awake again, or at least mostly so. And he he turned his head slowly, to stare at Knockout with wide open, though confused, nervous optics.

"Grab me a sanitizing sprayer, a medium duty welder, and an internal line repair kit," Knockout ordered the student, who stood beside him, looking just slightly like he might just panic and run.

"Hey. You got a name?" Knockout quickly asked the badly inured bot, mostly to hold his focus on not losing consciousness again. But also because of course he needed to know. Reaching around to a cupboard, which he'd kicked open with his strong foot, he hurriedly reached into it with his grabbing stick and fetched a pile of clean rags, all but one of which he dumped quickly onto a work table just within his reach. One one he still held in his head, he promptly used to hold over the bleeding gash, in an effort to clean it up a little and hopefully see what it was he was working with.

"Streetlight..." The patient mumbled an answer, before his optics blinked again, and he tried, still in clear confusion and fright, to sit himself up. Knockout stopped him with a gently shove back down. "You're a medic?" the bot's optics blinked again, and travelled in dismay to the mobility cart.

"I like to think, a pretty decent one," Knockout answered quickly. And only his past few years of experience in dealing with civilians – many of them nervous and edgy – allowed him to speak so calmly, and even to laugh just a little. "I can't do it all anymore. But I can certainly do this."

"That's light duty." he said, turning to the student, who had come back to stand next to him again, with his hands full of tools. "I don't think that's going to work. I'll never get a wide enough beam on it."

"S... sorry, Knockout" the student mumbled.

"Don't apologize," Knockout said, sure he was a bit closer to needlessly snapping than he would have liked. And quickly, understanding a need for mercy on a panicked student who didn't know better, because he had not yet learned, he added quickly, "Medium duty welders are the blue handles. Light duties are green."

"Hey," he said, speaking urgently to his patient then, as he saw the injured bot's optics half close and his head tilt horribly to the side. "Wake up. Can you tell me what happened?"

"I... I dunno," Streetlight mumbled. His optics were wide open again and coming back into focus. "I... don't remember."

"I'm fully convinced you're lying," Knockout said at once, because the look on the young refugee's face-plate told him that indeed he was. But he kept his tone gentle, understanding. "We can wait a bit to talk about this. But I really do need to know what's going on." He pulled back the rag, now soaked through with oily energon, and grabbed the welder the nervous young student hand brought to him. This time a blue handled medium duty and set it on the work table beside him. A quick look at the gash without all the mess covering it, told him that sure enough it was cut through the frame beneath the body armour, and to the wiring beneath even that. Quickly he grabbed the sprayer and turned it on.

"Please... please d.. don't hurt me," the patient mumbled wide optic'd and now clearly close to horrified.

"Not going to hurt you," Knockout answered fast. And he resisted the urge to shake his head with dismay at the rampant fear, among so many of the returned refugee. neutrals, caused by their tragic lack of exposure to proper medical care. "It's just a bit of warm water and disinfectant. It might sting a fair bit, and there will be some pressure from the spray... I'll make sure you're not feeling anything before I start repairs, okay?"

"'Kay," the injured young bot said quietly, and he nodded his head a little. But he was immediately to move his badly damaged arm, struggling to pull away, just as soon as the lightest spray of water touched it.

"I do hate to say it, but you're half as bad as my youngling," Knockout said lightly, joking for the sake of trying to make the bot calm down. "I'd think nothing of that, except that she''s still tiny."

"Sorry," Streetlight mumbled. And his frame relaxed at least a little bit, as he chuckled slightly at the comment. "I'm just... I'm kinda scared of medical stuff."

"Most bots are these days," Knockout said, if only to encourage him in his efforts to keep still by telling him he understood.

He struggled with the sprayer far more than he would ever have let anyone know that he was actually struggling. Sitting on his cart, the reach was terrible, even leaning forward as much as he could. He was reaching up higher than would be comfortable for anybot for long, and his left arm was still not great with reaching past the height somewhere far below his shoulder. The weight of the sprayer, held tightly in both of his hands, the right taking the slack for the still weaker left while he pressed the trigger on the handle, was making matters far worse still. He knew he would have just as much difficulty in welding, for all the same reasons – though a welder was thankfully a fair bit lighter. He had done repairs on his own before in the time since his second processor failure. But, he realized quickly that none had been serious yet. Small cuts mostly to the armour of bots who sat in chairs in front of him, and let him hold their lightly bleeding hand or foot, while he worked on them carefully.

Still he persevered, determined.

"Terribly sorry," he said to the medical student, when his patient jumped in obvious fright again, the second the sprayer was turned up to a level high enough to do any good. And Knockout could not ignore the damaged young bot's look of pain, as he clearly struggled not to yell, or even cry. "I don't believe I ever caught your name."

"Starsong," the student answered hesitantly. And he was backing away, too quickly.

"Starsong, I need your help." Knockout saw the young student shake his head at that, as he took another step back.

"I... I'm brand new. I've only been a med student for five days... I don't know how to do anything yet!"

"Anyone can do this," Knockout said quickly. And indeed, it was only by chance at this point that the bot happened to be a medical student at all. "I need you to chat with this fellow. Doesn't matter what about. Just keep him calm, while I work."

"I can do that," Starsong answered quickly. And he sounded confidently now as he stepped closer again and looked the damaged bot in the optics.

"Knockout's right ya know," he said to him. "You're so not the only one with a fear of medics. I myself would probably collapse from terror if I was in here as a patient instead of helping with one. You're doing ten times better than I would. So, what are you into?"

Knockout did not even hear the patient's answer to the student's question. And the rest of a steady ongoing conversation was only background noise to him, as he worked, intently, still struggling more then he knew might have been safe for him or the injured bot - but doing the very best he could regardless.

Setting down the sprayer, he picked up the spot welder from inside the kit, open on the table beside him. And holding it in his hand, knowing he would surely need it, he looked closely as the bleeding gash, spotting two tone lines under the torn body armour. That he knew at once, explained the profuse bleeding. He managed, with a now slightly shaky hand, to clamp a gushing line. And carefully, he powered up the spot welder. The torn line inside the bot's body, was a major hose – one that carried energon and oil from the behind the spark chamber to the rest of the body. And it had spurted just a little with every pulse of the spark, until it had finally been clamped. But Knockout, despite his own condition, and the full understanding that the task was almost still beyond him, took on the task of repairing the line, because somebot had to and quickly. It took him longer than he wanted it to take. But when he had finished, he was satisfied it would hold just fine.

He needed to rest for a very brief moment as soon as he'd finished that task, because his left hand, still a fair ways from full function, was shaking too badly from the strain he'd put on it. But he didn't rest long. He couldn't. And forcing his fingers to steady themselves just a bit more, confidant that the hardest task was done with, he grabbed the larger welder, and supported his left hand again slightly with his right, as he began to weld the edges of the wide gash together.

The conversation between Streetlight and Starsong continued on all the while, the two chatting a while just like they could be friends. And Knockout dared to think, to his amusement that perhaps they would be. But only seconds after he'd begun the welding work on the body armour, the injured bot began to pull away again in obvious anxiety.

"You're okay," Knockout assured him. And he rested a hand for a second on the patent's chest panel to steady him. "Do you feel any pain?"

"N... no," Streetlight answered shakily. "Just... a...a bit unpleasant."

"A bit of discomfort can't be helped, of course," Knockout said, understanding. "But yell at me if anything actually hurts, okay? It shouldn't. I've been working all this time, and the pain sensory network for that arm is offline."

"'Kay..." Streetlight mumbled, nodding a little, still shakily and so obviously trying so hard just to calm himself down again. He took a slow intake without needed any prompting to do so, and turned his head to look away from the medic and the welder in his hand. Knockout surmised quickly, to his dismay, that the device, with it's shiny tip and bright blue handle, had simply scared the already edgy young refugee a bit too much.

Starsong, with no need for prompting either began to quickly chit chat again. Something about racing this time and the new racetrack, that was newly finished just outside of the city. Now that was a subject Knockout knew maybe too much about. And Streetlight, it happened was far more a possible spectator than an interested racer, but he was certainty into some good talk about it. Knockout joined in their conversation, chiming in here and there while he held his focus mostly on his work, because it seemed that talking with him as well was even more useful distraction for the unfortunate injured young bot.

It still took a while and a fair bit more work. After the welding was done there were dents to be assessed, and two smaller far more minor cuts to the bot's lower arm to be cleaned and bandaged. He needed scanning, and there was still that worry for a bump to his head. But the scans showed nothing, and it was easy from there to be sure the early lack of consciousness had come only from energon loss. Knockout taught the young beginner student how to help him in securing the newly welded arm against the young bot's chest, with a heavy mesh bandage, just to keep it still long enough to let the repairs take hold. And the young patient sat up a moment on the repair table, looking dazed and scared, and thankful... and well beyond exhaustion, as the shock of whatever it was that had actually happened to him in the first place so clearly began to catch up to him.

"Lay back down for a bit," Knockout told the kid calmly. "I'm admitting you to the ward for today. From there we'll see what happens. Someone will be along to get you in a bit. I just need to work out where to put you." And he nearly jumped out of his body armour, when he turned around to see someone standing behind him, a metres away.

The bot was a very large framed fellow. And tall too. Painted mostly light blue in colour with some dull white and a hint of faded red.

"I'm sorry," Knockout said quickly. "I... didn't hear you come in." Indeed he hadn't, and it was clear the young student hadn't either. Knockout took one more quick look at his patient, recharging already, and turned his cart to roll toward the stranger. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"So, you must be Knockout," the large stranger said at once. And Knockout only nodded.

"I am working now as head of law enforcement in this new city," the blue bot explained. He gestured with a waving hand, toward the resting refugee on the repair table. "I came to have a word with that that patient of yours. But he seems to be a bit worse off than I'd hoped he'd be. I'll let him rest a while and see if he'll talk once he's awake again."

"I tried to make him tell me what happened," Knockout said. He began to roll toward the medbay doors, with the newcomer walking beside him. "He tried to lie to me... said he didn't know. No surprise at all, I suppose, that law enforcement is involved."

"That kid is most likely a victim, not a perpetrator," the big blue bot explained. And Knockout nodded, relieved. He would have assumed so of course, because the young bot had sustained such damage. But then that didn't always mean much at all, and he knew this too well from his time on the warship filled with near savages.

"A medical student guessed he'd been beaten up somewhere," Knockout supplied, trying to be helpful. And that certainly made some sense when it came to the scuffs and dents on the bot. But that was clearly only a small part of the story given the gash and the energon loss. The medic only shock his head, helpless and shaken by it.

"At this point, it looks like somebot, or bots, broke into the guy's apartment. It seems he lives alone, but neighbours on his floor in building six heard a lot of noise and screaming. He got away, bleeding, and someone was seen fleeing over his balcony rail two floors up. I haven't sent the patrol down there yet. I can only imagine the place is an energon soaked mess."

"I expect the kid will be in decent shape by this evening," Knockout said, still trying to be helpful, and trying hard to hide his concern over the fact that he lived in building six himself, with his family. "I can't promise he'll feel ready to talk of course. But physically he'll be alright."

"He may well have been threatened, told by a perpetrator that'd he'd suffer for it if he talked. It's all in the hands of law enforcement now. But he'll be alright, thanks to you," the big blue bot said. And surprisingly he reached out to place a hand firmly on Knockout's shoulder panel, as he continued to walk beside the mobility cart. "I watched you work for a while on that kid. Didn't disturb you, because you were of course working... let me be the first to say that was impressive. Still recent 'Con defector. Physically damaged. Still, you might just have saved that kid's life. I'm no medic obviously. But I do know full there's far more to doing it decently well then just patching up broken bots and mopping up energon afterwards. That kid was obviously sacred half to death and you helped him not be."

"That comes from some experience," Knockout said lightly. "It wasn't always my strongest suit – patience and calm in the face of shaking patients. Then I became a creator to my very own youngling..."

"Cybershock," the newcomer said, surprising him in knowing that. Quickly he want on to explain. "I met your daughter the other day. I'm an old friend of Arcee, who brought the little one to meet my arriving ship. I must say your daughter is wonderful child. Though too smart for her own possible good already... And Arcee could barely stop talking about you and your own accomplishments."

"Ultra Magnus, I would assume," Knockout ventured then, cluing in. He'd known full well he'd run into the somewhat infamous Autobot eventually.

The large blueish bot nodded confirmation, and he stopped in the hallway a moment to lean against a wall behind him. And he looked Knockout in the optics just as soon as he too had stopped. Slowly he spoke again, his intent look leaving no doubt at all, about the seriousness of his words. "I'm not one to mince words and 'beat around bushes' as I beleive the expression goes. I've known Arcee for at least two centuries. And like most on this base, I've made it my business to protect and care for her, regardless of course of the fact that she can take care of herself and would scrap anyone who doubted it. When I learned from her that her chosen bondmate was a still recent former 'con, the news was both upsetting and baffling to me. I could never in all the time I once served beside her, once imagine that she would sympathize with a defector, enough to from a friendship. I will admit, I told her outright that I figured she'd been foolish to let herself fall in love with the lost ex'con she'd sought to help."

Ultra Magnus gave a short laugh, and continued on slowly, after shaking his head, just as though his own slight amusement was somehow not half as obvious as it was. "In typical stubborn Arcee fashion she only told me I didn't understand. That she didn't love a recent former 'con, but a new Autobot instead. She insisted up and down, again typical of only Arcee, that there is indeed a difference. She called you compassionate, just like any one of us. You can't fake compassion. Not the true sort that makes any real difference. And seeing you with that young patient, understanding from the look on your face-plate that you wanted him to be okay, not for the heroic status of having done something great, but because you knew he mattered..."

"That truly means a lot," Knockout answered, meaning it.

* * *

Cybershock came out of recharge, well aware at once of something strange beneath her body. Bouncy! She decided, considering a moment, with her optics still closed. The surface she was lying on, was bouncy. She moved just a bit and sure enough the surface bounced just enough to make her smile at the motion. But the surface was firm too. She liked it. She recognized it well. And n her little processor, with her optics still closed tight, she took a moment to make a game of guessing exactly where she was - because the world really was, it seemed to her, a very different place with one's optics closed.

She certainly was not in her own recharging basket, she guessed quickly. And she knew she was right about that. Her own little recharging pad inside the basket was much harder than this. And inside the basket she always felt closed in... confined by the sides. Cybershock giggled a silent over just how well she could get out on her own and how her creators both knew it well. Slowly, she extended an arm out into nothing but the air of whatever room she might have been in, and knew at once she liked to wake up in that openness far better.

Giving up her guessing game as quickly as she'd started to play it, Cybershock opened her opics, and blinked a second at the light metal greyness she found herself laying on half sideways. Of course! She giggled to herself again, and felt like she should have guessed at once. The large and comfortable sofa in her family's living room. It certainly was bouncy. She always did love to bounce on it – much to her carrier's dismay, and her creator's chuckling under quiet intakes as he so clearly pretended he'd never once seen her do it.

The youngling rolled herself over slowly onto her back. And she lay a moment, on the big comfortable 'bouncy' sofa, wondering why simply moving had felt different to her. And then she remembered the morning. Her very first frame upgrades! Moving felt different because her body was different. Well parts of it anyway, and it was more than enough to matter a lot. She remembered only a little bit of coming back home that day with her creators. She remembered that she'd tried to walk a little bit, though that might still have been back in the medical unit of the Autobot base. And she knew she hadn't even started then to figure it out. She'd been brought home, quiet possibly carried because she was so tired out. And she understood quickly that she must have dozed back into recharge, left to lay on the sofa for awhile.

A quick glance to her right and across the living room, and she saw on the viewing screen mounted to the wall, that a holovid had ended. She remembered asking her carrier to turn on one for her to watch. And she'd picked out her favourite youngling science show, but might not have made it to the opening theme song. She thought again back to standing badly in the medbay, Working hard to sleepily take steps with, balancing on feet that stumbled badly and knees that wanted to turn badly to one side or the other, while Ratchet stood behind her holding her hands firmly, and her little body still fell forward and then to the side, regardless. She remembered that her carrier had stood in front of her, somewhere across the little section of the room, cheering loudly, when the youngling managed to take just one tiny stumbling step, as the old medic supported most of her weight with his large hands wrapped around the sides of her body.

Still laying flat on her back on the family sofa, Cybershock bent her left leg, and then quickly her right. She turned her feet to the left then the right, and wiggled both for a second, before she decided firmly that she felt much stronger by then... and far more coordinated too. Deciding just as quickly that there was truly, only one way to find out for sure just how right she was, the youngling sat herself up. So far so good. She smiled to herself and turned to point her feet toward the floor, but she couldn't make her legs work half that well.

At that moment she felt a flash of fear, as she knew for sure she would not be able to stand up to walk anywhere. But she wanted to move, to be off the sofa, to restart the holovid on the player so that she could sit or lay on the floor close to the screen, and this time she could watch it play. The fear left her just as quickly as it had come, and boldly, she wiggled across the sofa and close to it's edge, where finally she dropped – quite recklessly, and she knew it – over the edge and onto the floor.

Cybershock's small metal body, hit the floor of the living room with a little clanging thump, and that made her giggle for a second. She cheered to herslef silently, when she realized she had landed exactly as she;d been trying to, face down on the floor, with her arms in front of her. From here she knew that even with her frame's limited motion, she could sit herself up. It was some work to do it. As much work as it had been on the sofa, but she did it easily. And slowly, with some hesiation, she began to wiggle quite fast across the living room, using her arms – just slightly stronger than her legs, and just good enough for the job, to move her even faster.

She was going, of course, right for the holovid player, right under the large screen on the far wall. But an open door leading out to the large patio beside her, caught her attention quickly instead. And changing direction, with a pause between, to catch an intake, and cheer herself on again, she made right for the open door that led to the railed in section of 'outside,' reaching it surprisingly quick with her awkward backside shuffling and propelling herself forward with her hands.

"Cybershock?" the voice of her creator said from outside somewhere on the patio, just as soon as she had rattled the door a little while trying to hold onto it and peek around it. She saw him at once, sitting on his cart outside, with a datapad on his lap. And he turned around to look at her when she grinned up at him, sleepily.

"I'm so sorry, my girl," he said, addressing her as he so often did because she'd come to love it. Instantly she saw a sad look on his face-plate. Regret? She thought that word might have been right. "I'd fully expected you'd recharge much longer, so I left you for a while. How... how did you get off the sofa?"

"Can I come out?" she asked instead of answering his question. And she watched carefully as he nodded his permission. But still he looked at her confused, and still regretful.

"Hold on, Cybershock," he said, when she started to move in her awkward improvised way, toward him. His hand moved at once to his cart's hand control. "Stay still right there. Let me come and get you."

"I can do it, Daddy," Cybershock answered back, smiling. And she saw him stop with hesitation clear on his faceplate, while she kept on moving.

"That's very good, my girl," her creator said. And she sensed his pride in her at once while he chuckled with amusement. She stopped, coming to rest in front of him. And for a moment she just sat on the patio's smooth floor, facing toward him and looking up. It seemed to her then that the perspective was just a little different somehow.

"Thanks," she said, grinning. But slowly her grin faded, as questions set in. And still looking up at her creator, who sat smiling down at her the fear of moments before returned and this time it did not instantly fade away again. "Daddy... I... I can't stand up at all. My legs won't let me, and I want to run again..."

"You've just got to keep on trying." She saw him appear to think a second, before he questioned her slowly. "Cybershock, you've seen me stand up a bit a few times now, right? You remember how I do it?"

When she nodded eagerly, he continued with a tone of encouragement. "Here. Reach up for me. Both hands." When she complied, reaching just as high as she could with tired stiff and resisting arms, to grab his outstretched hands, she felt him pull against her just a little and lightly.

"Hold on to my arm rests," he urged slowly, placing her little hands around the little support bars of the cart's armrests, before he reached forward a little and grabbed her gently around the middle of her body, while she stayed sitting on the floor.

"Ready?" He asked. His tone was cheerful, and he grinned, making her giggle at him. "Pull up. Pull up!" He yanked her body gently to its feet, at the same moment she did so the very best she could.

"Yay!"she cried, grinning right back as soon as she was on her feet. And she stayed there, holding onto his cart working harder than she ever remembered having to before, just to stay up like that. But she wanted to stand. She was determined to be able to.

"Where's Mama gone?" she asked calmly, still standing up well enough while she held on. She had seen no sign at all of her carrier since she'd woken up And carefully she turned to look through the open patio door, to be sure that she still saw no sign of her inside their apartment.

"She's gone downtown real quick," her creator answered, smiling as he sat parked, and she stood still using his armrests to support herself. The wires in her legs pulled too hard and it almost most hurt they did, but she pleased just to be sanding so well, and it felt like it was easier by the second to keep on doing it. she saw him grin the little grin that most everyone seemed to think was funny somehow. And he very gently tapped her on the front of her chest panel. "You remember, before you were powered down today? Mama told you she'd have a surprise for you?"

"No," Cybershock admitted slowly, because the entire morning was to her mostly still a blur, and the only thing she remembered well was being held while she was crying. Her optics lit up at once and she grinned, excited. "A surprise? For me? From you and Mama?"

"It was all her idea far more than mine. But yes. And she's gone to a shop, because she forgot something she said was important."

"What is it?"

"Well," her creator laughed, shaking his head. "It wouldn't be a surprise if you told you, now would it?"

"No..."

"High five," he said happily, after she'd laughed. And with a quickly that made her all but forget her questioning he held up his right hand so that she could smack his lightly with hers - a silly little thing she knew he'd learned once from humans on the world called Earth.

"Other hand," he cried quickly, just as soon as she'd done it once. His left hand was held much lower, out to the side of his body. And she reached out fast to tap just like she had the first.

"Look at you go," he said laughing then. And she grinned and cheered when she realized that in smacking his hands, she'd let go of his armrests and was standing up all by herself.

She felt bold then, tried to take a step all on her own without even a word. And she stumbled, catching herself with both of her hands on his knees, before she took one more step, closer to his frame, while she held on like that. Her creator's hand moved again to is hand control and this time he reversed very slowly across the patio, with her walking in very slow and hesitant steps forward as he went. She thought after a couple of steps she might just want to stop, because walking was suddenly a very hard thing to do. But after those couple of steps, she just wasn't pleased enough with herself, and wordlessly she took one more. So he kept on reversing. He backed the cart up, with her walking toward him, and of course never quite catching up, until he reached the far railing of the patio, and the youngling felt like it was getting easy now. But she couldn't walk backwards yet, and so he couldn't go anywhere.

Lifting her by himself was a tricky thing for him to do. And she understood that. He could do it. He had done it a few times in her life. But his body lacked the shoulder strength to do it very well or very often – and so she'd be climbing onto his knees on her own since the day she first could. But that moment, he reached out again, leaning froward just a bit, so that he could lift her up, at least the very best he could. And slowly, with the determination to safely do it, clear on his face-plate, he lifted her onto his lap, while she grinned, laughing. Carrying her now, he made his way quickly back to roughly where he'd started out.

"You're so much heavier now," he said, laughing as he shifted her gently, pulling her up to sit a little straighter. And Cybershock realized only then, when she really took notice and thought about it, that she really was bigger with the upgraded parts. It only made sense to her than that she would be much heavier too.

"Do you feel any pain in your arms or hands?" her creator asked slowly. And he tapped her left elbow gently, and made a silly little show of grabbing for her fingers, as he questioned her. Cybershock shook her head.

"How about your legs or feet?"

Cybershock shook her head again. And this time, on to his game, she pulled her still uncoordinated leg back from him, before he could grab her foot.

"Daddy?" she asked curiously, in the next moment. And she sat up straighter again on his knees while gesturing a bit with her hand toward the data pad he'd been looking at before, and now lay on a currently unused patio chair close by. "What's on that pad?"

"This?" her creator picked it up and held it in his hand. "It's... a few photofiles."

"Can we look at them?" Cybershook was sure she loved photofiles just as much as her carrier was known to love them. And the idea of looking at some now, sitting outside in the evening, with her creator, made her smile with excitement. Her excitement faded a little when she realized just how hesitant he had sounded at her question. And she looked up at him, now with concern.

"We'll look them over one day soon, okay my girl?" he said back. "I'll explain all of them to you."

Cybershock nodded firmly in agreement. And she was about to reply, when she heard the apartment door slide open, followed quickly by footsteps and the sound it it closing again with a click.

"Mama's home!" she exclaimed. And her creator was already driving the cart forward again, moving quickly toward the door, to carry the youngling inside.

"Daddy," she said quickly, when he'd rolled back inside and had made it partway across the living room. And she managed all by herself, to get off his lap and land standing up holding the cart. "Drive backwards 'gain. I wanna show show Mama what I can already do!"

"Cybershock," her carrier exclaimed, her expression shocked, impressed and smiling, the second she came into the room to see her youngling's careful steps. And she bent forward a little, watching her intently as she so often did, with patient encouragement. She held out a hand, and the youngling watched, listening as she further encouraged her. "Can you let go and stand on your own yet?"

"Yep," Cybershock said nodding. She could. She had once already. She did it again"

"Can you take a step on your own now?"

The youngling considered for a second, because of course she'd tried that once already. And she'd stumbled in trying it. But that was different, she decided quickly. She hadn't even walked at all yet before she'd stumbled, and she certainly could now.

"Yep," she said again, with confidence. And just like that she took three careful, albeit shaky steps in her carrier's direction, before her wires pulled far too hard and she stopped again in sudden slight pain from trying.

"Come on," her carrier said. And she sounded so happy, as she hurried over, and lifted the youngling into her arms, with a remark similar to her creator's about how she'd gotten so heavy. There was a very short discussion between her parents, where they decided her weight must have increased by about one hundred pounds... that seemed to her like a lot because she was pretty sure her frame had only weighed a few hundred pounds all along. "We have something to show you." And with all of them laughing while they hurried, the little family headed down apartment's wide hallway, and to her recharge room at the far end of it.

"My... recharge basket is gone..." Cybershock realized out loud, looking around her little room. Indeed the basket was no longer where it had always been, in it;s place in the middle of the room. She was set down again, and once again she was determined to stand up awhile, which she did by holding on to her carrier's hands to assist herself, because her small legs were still almost too tired to do it completely on her own again.

Looking around the room again quickly, her optics fell at once, on simple recharging station against the wall, beneath her window. It was 'youngling sized.' But to her that was still very big. And the bedding that covered it was a black and white checkered patern, to match the flags that hung on her walls – the bedding she would have easily chosen all along if she'd had the option, she decided giggling to herself.

"You're too big to fit in the recharging basket now," her carrier said. And she held her up,with one hand on a shoulder panel and the other holding her wrist, so that she could walk slowly toward the recharge station and take a better look at it.

"And..." she added slowly, as she reached to open her storage compartment, to retrieve the thing she must have run downtown for in the first place. It was a small table lamp – much like the ones used in the rest of the apartment, but a little smaller. And this one was pink. Cybershock was happy with the color, because she was almost a little sad at giving up her old decor scheme completely. She watched her carrier set the lamp up nicely on the little table beside the recharge station... where Cybershock knew for sure she could turn it on and off all my herself now.

"You're going to recharge with us tonight," her creator said, still siting parked just inside the doorway. "Just because your frame is still weak. But tomorrow you can recharge in here."

"I wanna recharge in here tonight... in my new recharge station," Cybershock argued. She felt her determination welling up quickly through her frame. And letting go of her carrier's hand again, she continued to stand up. "I can do it. I'll be okay. If I need help I'll just... call."

She watched while her creators exchanged the kind of looks that grown bots so often did when they were considering... or concerned about younglings. And it felt like it was minutes. But finally she saw them both slowly nod their agreement.

 **Notes/ So there we have it. Another one down. Yes a lot of this chapter clearly has little to do with the overall plot of this story. It's mostly a filler chapter (which I don't exactly need to be writting, because I already have probably TOO many ideas for this project. This one was interesting to write, and I'm happy with how it turned out. I really wanted to start to give tiny Cybershock her own personality, and let her become a character in her own right.**

 **I've seen bits and pieces in other fanfictions, relating to exactly how the idea of growning young bots would actually be handled. It makes sense that Cybertronians would obviously not grow up like we do, because they are metal and wires – things that can't change all that much. And to me, the mechanics of the whole matter, could well be complicated and even extremely challenging to deal with as a part of "youngling-hood." The concept ended up making a chapter almost of its own.**


	5. Chapter 5

_Spinning! He was spinning around and around, faster and faster, his hands held tightly by the much larger ones of his carrier, whose smile spread clear across her shiny silver face-plate, as she ran fast in tight circles. He gave one loud laugh, and quickly began to giggle hard, unable to make himself stop, and not wanting to in any case as she spun still quicker. And just as quickly, his carrier was laughing too._

" _Hold on tight," she warned him, laughing though still clearly serious all the same. "If I let you go now, you might just fly off the roof!"_

" _I fly, I fly," Soundwave answered speaking as well as he could, and doing it between hard giggles, because he wasn't thinking much about it all and thinking was the thing that seemed to make speaking hard instead of easy._

" _That wouldn't be a good thing," Shortwave replied at once. And she finally stopped spinning around, letting his feet drop again to the ground before she promptly bent to scoop him up into her arms, where he stayed a moment laughing again halfway hanging upside down while, her arms supported his weight._

" _You are getting too heavy," Shortwave said in a second. And she pretended she was about to drop him, letting him come close to falling to the ground below, before her arms caught him again in well under a single second._

" _I grow up..." Soundwave replied, as she placed him squarely back on his feet again._

" _Nope!" she answered. And she grinned big at him, before she tapped the front of his face-plate. Then she kneeled down and shook her head. "You won't grow up. Ever. Not allowed, because I said so."_

" _I do fly soon," Soundwave said, after a silent moment, and the small wings of the back of his frame perked up as straight as they could with the idea of using them eventually._

 _He knew he would never likely be the best of flyers. His genetic programming meant that his wings were build for lower altitude and slower flight speed. But also for endurance, and staying up for ages. Unlike many who were clearly so fast, he would never be a sprinter in the air. And he was proud as any just to be a flyer just like his carrier was... and unlike his grounder creator._

" _Nope," Shortwave told him firmly, but still laughing all the while. And she tapped him again on his face-plate, before she pulled him against her much larger frame and hugged him tight. "That would mean you're growing up. And I just said, not allowed."_

" _I... fly far," Soundwave protested, as he hugged her back, and then scrammed into her lap. He sat a moment like that, and he looked far out over the edge of the roof of their housing structure. He small hands gestured quickly as he spoke again, the very best he could. "I fly be...beyond Kaon. The whole way to Iacon..."_

" _I think that would be wonderful," was his carrier's answer, without even a pause._

" _You fly too... I learn, and you fly too." Soundwave looked up again at his carrier. And his optics fell now on the damage to her face-place. Two large dents and too many scuff marks from the time his creator had beat her again just that morning. She had let the wash station accidentally overflow, and had refused to agree out loud that she was careless and stupid when he ordered her to do so. Her right arm was dented too, from his rough grabbing hands. "Forever. We go. You be safe."_

" _We'll leave here one day," Shortwave said. "I'll find us a way out, and as soon as I do, we'll go... that way!" She let go of his with one arm in order to point to the west, before she laughed again, and spun herself awkwardly on the ground with him still in her lap, pointing south, then east. "Or that way. Maybe that way..."_

 _She was laughing again. But Soundwave was not. He looked intently at a barely healing gash across the front of his carrier's chest panel – one he'd helped her clean the day day before with hot water he'd fetched her when his creator had stumbled of to recharge, drunk, furious and muttering about how he would kill them both. It was hardly new, the words of hate. But the little youngling knew that she'd only gotten that injury after she had defended him from one of his own. Soundwave knew he never should have shed those tears after he'd been mocked for three wrongly placed words._

" _Creator – kill you," Soundwave said. Tears threatened again, but he refused to shed a single one. He felt he'd learned well to never cry now, because last time he had someone important had been hurt. But his fear came to him suddenly, and soon he was shaking where he sat staring up at his carrier. "I was... I am. I not should been. He kill one day you. Be... cause I am me."_

 _His language was failing him again, although he tried so hard. But Shortwave only listened carefully to each word he said. And the look in her optics told him clearly that she was working to place the words in order as she heard them. She was always patient, refused to finish a sentence when he struggled to get it right, and she always let him try his hardest._

" _He won't," Shortwave said, smiling as she hugged Soundwave tighter again. "He will never take me from you. Or you from me..."_

" _Mama, promise?" Soundwave asked, his faceplate still tight against her body armour._

" _I promise," Shortwave said, and Soundwave looked up again just in time to she her smile at him._

" _But I never was wanted," he said, trying hard to make sense, as she got sad all over again. "Soundwave – mistake..."_

" _My greatest mistake. My happiest accident!" Shortwave answered at once still smiling as she hugged him again. "If I'd known how much I'd love you I'd have wanted you two centuries ago to save me waiting..."_

Soundwave awoke with a terrible start. And for a moment he did not know where he was at all. He could not see a thing, and for a moment his instinct was to adjust the system of tiny cameras he used to see the world. He looking to the right, using his optics in that manner to adjust the vertical tracking, and then quickly he looked right for horizontal. But it did no good. He could see nothing at all, and that included his control screen and function menus. He might have panicked then. But he was still to close to recharge for panic, and instead he simply felt confused. Why though, he asked himself, a slow second later, was he so tired to begin with. And it was then that anxiety began, however slowly, to set in.

"Soundwave. Open your optics," a voice, speaking from somewhere nearby and to his right sound familiar as it spoke to him firmly And he heard a slight chuckle in the voice, behind the firm seriousness of it.

Slowly, he took the advice and opened his optics – realizing only then to his disbelief that he had simply not seen a thing because they had been closed.

"I am not used to vision without technology," he said quietly. And a sense of unease quickly followed, making him look away from the old bot just as soon as he'd looked in his direction.

"Your optics were damaged for centuries," Ratchet answered. And his tone of understanding was still somehow surprising and strange. The old bot chuckled a little under his intake. "Of course you'll still forget from time to time that you can in fact use them just like any bot."

Soundwave had always disliked laying down, anywhere but within the security of a locked living space - and even then only for necessary recharge. It made him uneasy, and he did not like unease. And just as soon as he felt his disorientation fade away, and without waiting for permission from the old medic to try doing so, he sat himself up on the recharge station just as quickly as he could manage to move. Ratchet cast him a glare for a second, and finally he just went instead to lightly shaking his head, clearly resigned to giving in.

"How do you feel?" the old bot questioned, his tone clearly cautious. And the look he gave turned serious, as he warned firmly, "hold onto your side rail for a moment if you insist on being up like that." And his optics gestured toward the railing, in an upright position on the left hand side of the recharge station. "You've only just come out of power-down. For you to get dizzy and take a potentially terrible fall is the last thing we need."

"Inquiry – what do I look like?" Soundwave asked slowly, while he held lightly to the side rail as advised. He felt the very instant he'd asked that it was a strange question for him to even consider. But somehow he felt like it mattered anyway.

Standing beside the recharge station, Ratchet only shook his head a little for a moment, as though trying to carefully consider his words before he spoke. And finally he did so. "I'll be perfectly honest about this. I feel like I've been able to make some obvious improvements. But in some aspects it's almost worse, just because of the extensive work involved. Your self repair systems will take care of this withing a couple of days and it should quickly seem better... Remember too, this is only the first of two, possibly three major repairs..."

"Firestorm will be happy to see you," the old medic continued on, making conversation a moment later as he cleaned up a nearby worktable. "She has Laserbeak too. I must say I'm still amazed at how much that bird of yours appears to like her..."

"Firestorm – coming back?" Soundwave questioned slowly

"Coming back?" Ratchet chuckled then with a clearly ammused shake of his head "I'm not sure she ever left. She's been in the waiting area for most of the afternoon, mostly reading datapads. But I must say she's certainly hitting it off with a couple of my patients too." He chuckled again and gestured in the vague direction of the door, where it was now known that Firestorm waiting somewhere beyond. "I'll let her come in here in a minute. But she can't stay long. You are going to rest a while this evening, if I'm going to let you out in the morning as planned..."

"Tell her to go home," Soundwave answered at once. And he stared straight ahead right in the face of the old medic's shocked and dismayed look.

"What do you mean tell her to...?" Ratchet questioned, shaking his head.

"Send her away. Tell her she might as well go off to find her friends and do whatever it is that they do."

"Soundwave," Ratchet snapped, and Soundwave knew he should have expected exactly that to happen, although he had not. "Don't you expect me to believe for a minute that you lack social skills enough to know full well how wrong it is of you to brush her off and push her away like that. Firestorm is positively dedicated to you. And you continue to tear her little spark to pieces, throwing her love for you back into her face-plate, because you've decided in the past months that it's suddenly appropriate to feel sorry for yourself!"

"Firestorm has spoken with you...?" Soundwave asked, his speech slower than ever, as sudden dread filled his spark, at a returned recent memory, of having flung the poor little bot backward across his room with a flying cable, because he was too upset to even think.

"She has." Ratchet nodded, confirming. But his voice was calmer now, understanding "She talked to me about a recent incident inside your living space, following the last repair to your optics..." The old bot stood a second, just shaking his head, before he continued on again. "You're lucky she saw right through that rage of yours. Most bots wouldn't have. Most bots, particularly physically vulnerable minibots as small as she is, would have run and never looked back. Firestorm is smart, intuitive... she knew exactly what was really wrong... Most bots wouldn't have bothered to even think about it before they gave up on you..."

He stopped speaking abruptly and wandered partway across the medbay, to pick up a folding chair left near a worktable a short ways away. Shaking his head again he carried it over, set it down near Soundwave's recharge station, and gave a little huff under his intakes. Slowly, with his head still shaking just a little he walked away and headed right out the door far across the medbay.

Soundwave shifted his position a little on the recharge station, after the old medic had gone. He dared to let go of the side rail again. And quickly feeling less than comfortable, he moved to sit with his legs over the side, before he grew unexpectedly light headed and grabbed for the rail again before promptly – though reluctantly - laying down again. The room began to spin, slowly at first and then quickly much faster, until he closed his optics tightly. And even then, it felt as though he was flipping oddly first to one side then the other, though he knew on some other level he was in one place.

"Soundwave...?" A small familiar voice called through the darkness of his closed optics, and the perceived motion of the room. He dared to open his optics again, and as he did the terrible motion slowly stopped.

Firestorm stood a short distance away, paused and leaning forward against her walking frame, which Laserbeak sat perched on the bars of. Abruptly Firestorm began to walk forward again just as fast as she possibly could have done safely, with her metal feet tapping against the medbay floor, and concern clear on her face-plate. And Soundwave knew at once he must have dozed into recharge at least a moment because he hadn't heard her feet at first.

"Yu uh'kay?" she asked quietly. And she sat down in the folding chair that Ratchet had so obviously left for her. Laserbeak left the walking frame she'd been riding on at once and flew to perch quickly on the side-rail of the recharge station.

"I am alright," Soundwave answered. He thought perhaps he should smile at her. But he still barely could.

"Ratchet send'me'in," Firestorm said, and Soundwave only nodded, figuring exactly so.

Somehow, now that she was with him again, he lacked all spark to be angry at the old bot for refusing to mind his own business. Instead he gestured with a waving hand, toward his face-plate, and resisted the urge to look away from her as he did so.

"Presently terrible state as I understand..."

"Is'priddy bad," Firestorm answered. And the look in her optics was one as genuinely undisturbed as ever. "Ratchet tell'mee'it would'be. But it'll be'betta by ta'mor'ow..." She opened her storage compartment, and carefuly took out a could of data pads, which she set down the edge of the recharge station, with a smile on her face-plate. "Ah'brought'ya data pads ta'read. Ah... Ah'tink those'are da'one yu' readin now..."

"Thank you, Firestorm," Soundwave answered, grateful at once for the reading material. Because hehad taken to reading a great deal. And quite unlike himself, he had forgotten to bring anything along with him.

"No'pro'lem," Firestorm answered smiling. But suddenly her smile turned to a frown, and he looked at him intently an with concern. "Yu'look... sad..."

"I was thinking about my carrier," Soundwave admitted slowly. And he was sure, as soon as he said it, that it sounded ridiculous to her. It had after all been centuries... and she'd lost her own family too. But once he'd started, he felt a strange need to explain himself. And carefully, forcing himself to keep on looking at her instead of down and away, he continued. "I dreamed of her today. Of a time while I was still a youngling bot. A day up on the rooftop of the building I grew up in..." He paused then and shook his head, confirming out loud what he feared most in his own processor. "It's outrageous of me to still think of such things after so long..."

"No'it'not," Firestrom answered, smiling. And she leaned forward in the folding chair, grabbing his hands gently in hers. "My creators'joined'da allspark when'Ah'was so young... I don't ev'en know dem'at'all. Dat'why'Ah don't talk'or'tink bout'dem. Ah'kno dey'loved me'alot. Ah'kno'they want'd mee. An'wen dey passed' I was'given ta my'brother Windstorm. He's all I ra'mem'ber of my youngling life. Its won'er'ful yu can still tink'ov'your own'carrier..."

"I... I still remember exactly what she looked like." Soundwave mused, deciding now to talk a little more about his life because he knew just how much Firestrom enjoyed his stories of the past – though he never did understand exactly how and why she possibly could. "I can't possibly forget the last time I ever saw her, still alive, yelling at my creator like she thought she really stood half a chance. I... I so often wondered when I was much younger, what she'd looked like after she'd died..."

"Yu... never saw a body...?" Firestorm sound genuinely surprised and disbelieving.

"I didn't." Soundwave answered simply. Because he hadn't.

* * *

"You may come in," Ratchet called, in response to an unexpected knocking on the door of his office.

He expected it to more than likely be one of his eight medical students, with some question or other for him, as they visited the office often for that very reason. But the door slid open, and he blinked once in surprise and quickly concern, when Firestorm instead walked slowly through the doorway, with her little walking frame in front of her.

"What can I do for you this morning?" The old medic asked quickly, as he looked her over purely out of habit to do so with most bots aside from the students who visited his office. And quickly he let out a small a sigh of relief. She did not appear sick or damaged.

"Yu haf'few'minute?" Firestorm asked. And a sense of urgency was more than obvious behind her just as clear hesitation.

"I think I can spare a moment or ten," Ratchet answered cheerfully. He gestured with a hand toward a chair in front of his desk for her to sit in. And she stood a second more, anxiously wringing her hands a little before she pushed the frame over, parked it and sat down slowly.

"Ah'bin thinkin'bout da Cybermatter trials...," Firestrom said. She was clearly just a bit resistant, but still so certain and determined too all the same. "Ah wanna do'it... And Ah'am ready..."

"You're certain about this?" Ratchet questioned. He reached across his desk, to put a hand on her shoulder panel gently. And he smiled assurance. "You know you don't have to."

"Ah'kno..." the young bot replied quickly. And she smiled right back. "Ah wan'ta. Ah can't a-magine just never knowing'if we coulda done it... won'rin one'day if we ever could've. An'ta think Ah'could help'so many othas one'day juss'by bein da first..."

"We will try to arrange to go forward with this in a few days then, if you're okay with that," Ratchet explained, seriously. "No use at all really, in holding off too long. Please reread the notes I gave you and when you're done that, reread them again. In the next day or two, I'll be calling you back in as well for a meeting, where we can discuss everything in detail."

Firestorm smiled slightly in agreement, and she nodded her head a little as she did so. But still a slight anxiety was now more than clear on her face-plate.

"Ah'also bin... lookin'fa infam'ation" she said quickly. "Yu olda'bot. Bin'round long'before da'war. If anybot would'kno, yu migh..."

Ratchet considered a second, at least somewhat amused by her statement. Finally he felt a sense of pride in it somehow, just considering how long he really have lived and just how much he had seen. Slowly he smiled again at the young bot, before a chuckle escaped and he nodded.

"I might just know a good bit about a number of things," he said. He reached for the little dish of sweets on the corner of his desk, offered her one, and chuckled knowingly when she of course reached right for an iron flavoured as always. He choose a cobalt for himself, and chuckled again.

"If yu'were told some'un is dead, but'yu neva seen a'body, would'yu ble've they really'dead?"

Firestorm's question was perhaps the last thing Ratchet may have expected from her, or many bots in general. And he nearly chocked on the sweet he had just put into his mouth, because of it.

"I might," he answered slowly, when the intent and determined look on her face-plate told him she was entirely serious, despite the strangeness of the question. "But than I also may not." he thought a moment on exactly how to go about explaining, as he wondered all the while if he ought to be concerned with the young bot's sudden interest in questions involving the bodies of the dead of any possible subject. Finally, he added thoughtfully, "it would depend I suppose on who it was who gave me the news."

"Soo'iff some'un tought'he'had'a gooood reason'ta'lie bout some'tin soo'im'por'ant..."

"Firestorm, what is this all about?" Ratchet questioned carefully. And he reached over the top of his desk, to lightly take her hands in his, while he smiled with compassion.

"Soundwave's carrier," Firestrom blurted, speaking quickly then. And she starred intently forward, determination blazing in her optics. The look on her face-plate, was just as serious as the moment she'd walked in. "Soundwave tell'mee evy'ting 'bout'her... how'one day she juss'dead. Wat'if'he'wass lied'ta? His' carrier love'him more'dan eni'one."

Ratchet thought instantly of the creators he knew well, along with their creations – Bumblebee with his little Hotwire, Knockout with his much loved daughter... a flying bot called Jetstream – who he knew far less, but still had no reason to doubt – with his own pair of younglings, Takeoff and Runway.

"No one would tell a youngling bot his own creator was dead, if it wasn't true," he reasoned at once.

But Firestorm looked at him, intently as ever. And she slowly shook her head with doubt.

"Soundwave's migh'ave..." she insisted, serious. "He tell'mee he'neva saw'her. Just'hearfrom'him she wass'gone 'cause'he'd shot'er dead..." Firestorm fell silent again for a moment. And she appeared to think intently, before she spoke again. "His creator'sold him'into slave'ry a'soon as'she gone. Ah'tink he could'a lie'to do'it... Ah'only tell'yu'tings he tol'mee, 'cause'Ah tink then'we have hope'ov helpin'. And 'you'll keep'his secrets'safe."

"Hmm," Ratchet said, nodding a second at the young bot in understanding. Slowly though he continued on, explaining sadly. "Firestorm, the war for Cybertron went on for centuries. And it tore entire families apart. Siblings split from each other to join opposing factions, younglings separated from creators... Many bots chose neither faction at all. What's left of any records imply that over fifty percent may just have been neutrals. And those are the refugees like you... scattered across the stars on ships – some of which may never come home."

"Yu mean'ta say'dare no'ting we'can'do. No'way'ta eva'kno?" Firestorm was adamant. Determined as ever. And Ratchet shook his head just a little.

"Never say never," he said, meaning it entirely. "The was is over where once we believed it would never end. Our world is alive, where once we thought it was lost to us forever. But a search like this, for one bot on a rebuilding world... the people of Earth might have compared a search like this to 'finding a needle in a haystack.'" He paused a second chuckling, before he mused again, as serious as ever. "Now, I never did work out exactly what haystacks are, but I can only imagine that to search for needles in them is nearly impossible anyway. And without even a name to go on..."

"Her'name wass'Shortwave," Firestrom said quickly, and her tone fully indicated that she intended to persue the matter, despite the impossibilities against her. "She'wass a flya, from'Kaon."

"That was a very common name," Ratchet mused out loud. And though his doubt was more than great enough to show in his voice, he was interested too, excited at the prospect – however small – of eventual success. He chuckled a little, before he gave a slight huff under his intakes, and said with a laugh, "almost as common as Firestorm I think."

"Yu met'a bot call'Shortwave?" Firestorm asked at once. And her optics lit instantly with hope, almost as though she hadn't heard even half of what he'd said – though he knew she certainly had, and she certainly understood.

"I have. Eight I can recall off the top of my head. Three were femmes but none of those were flyers."

"This'harda than'Ah thought..." Firestorm mused, with a shake of her head in reply to his answer. But still, even now her optics shown with hope.

"A service record would might be some help if we could find one," Ratchet said in a tone meant to avoid any notion of false hope. "If she had been a 'Con, I fear Soundwave, of any bot, would easily have found that out himself through his access to records computers. I'm left to think then that she remained neutral. And if she did, and she managed to survive, she could be anywhere with no record at all to show that she was ever born. And so many bots changed their names at the start of the war."

"She'coulda bin'an Autobot..." Firestrom suggested, hopeful as ever. And she grinned up at him over the desk with a look that only she, it seemed, could ever quite pull off without looking entirely ridiculous.

"I'll admit it's possible." Ratchet muttered an answered, shaking his head slowly, as he held a finger up firmly. "But it's too small a chance to seem likely. This bot came from Kaon – where at the start of the war for Cybertron, you either joined up with Megatron's forces – which bots did willingly by the thousands. You choose neutrality and left the city quickly in the middle of the night... or you died horribly once the city was all too easily conquered."

"How'many make'it out'live'as Autobots?" Firestorm still refused to give up the track of her thinking, with the stubbornness of any still near youngling.

"It was a very small number," Ratchet explained. And he shook his head again, this time in regretful sadness. "Twenty – maybe thirty in total, out of a city that once housed a million bots."

* * *

"Mama!" Arcee heard Cybershock call. And she looked up, dismayed to see just how far her youngling had gotten from her in only a fraction of a second. The youngling left her place, had sitting on the natural bench at the edge of the oil pool with her carrier. And she now stood outside of the pool entirely, poised bent just slightly forward with her arms in front of her, at the very outside edge. "Watch me jump!"

Cybershock could certainly swim. She'd been brought to the pool for the first time just that morning, but she'd very easily picked it up on her own, by watching others do it and trying herself without ever being taught. And she quickly proved just as fearless in the watery oil as she did on the playground. Too fearless for her own safety, Arcee worried at once. Cybershock had never jumped in before, or been taught how to dive anymore than she;d been taught to swim. Clearly she only decided to try, because she'd seen Speedbreaker do it so easily.

"Be careful, please," Arcee warned. And she dropped quickly off the ledge, using her feet to tread oil deeper than her height, while at the same time she held her hands out, ready to grab her child in an instant.

"She's fine," Knockout said laughing lightly from his place, still sitting on the bench at the edge of the pool. He always had been the one to allow and even encourage the youngling's daring behaviour, while Arcee panicked, fretting about it.

"Are you watching? Are you watching?" The youngling questioned, bouncing a little on the edge, and ready to spring forward.

"I'm watching," Arcee answered. And indeed she was watching intently.

She questioned the wisdom in letting the youngling dive into the pool at all. She could swim, yes. And surprisingly well for a youngling who had just been introduced for the first time to an oil pool. Still - this was the first day she'd ever spent around it at all. But her child was confidant, excited, and she knew she could grab her in under a second. Her bond mate was right. The youngling was fine. Arcee did not swim much. Mostly she liked to sit on the edge, half in half out of the pool, perhaps tread a little... but she could do it very well if she had to. And she knew that sometimes – maybe most of the time – she needed to trust her younging's ability and confidence instead of holding her back.

"Jump!" she said to the youngling then. And Cybershock leapt right off the pool's edge, flying forward a good distance propelled by her forward motion.

She hit the thin oil laughing hard, and her momentum pulled her underneath so that for a second she all but disappeared entirely. But quickly she surfaced again, head up, arms rapidly treading oil, and a grin across her little blue face-plate. Instantly, she turned and began to swim toward the edge, before just as quickly climbing out, so obviously determined to do it again. And so Arcee watched her again. Carefully as ever. And again the youngling jumped in. This time, to her carrier's dismay, shock and worry, she pulled in a good intake right before she dove. And instead of coming up, she dropped toward the bottom, flipping over in the watery oil, reaching down as far as she could to touch the smooth surface at the very bottom of the pool, metres below her. She didn't come close, and soon she came back up. But still, by the time she did, Arcee's spark was pounding. Cybershock swam fast for the edge and climbed out, running again to jump back in yet again. And on this third jump, Arcee caught her as she hit the thin oil of the pool – not because she had to. Clearly she didn't. But because she simply wanted to. Because it was fun and it made her and her little one both laugh loudly.

"Your kid's unstoppable," Speedbreaker laughed from her place a short distance away. "Of course it doesn't hurt that she got you two for creators"

She sat on a wider section of the bench at a point higher up in even more shallow area, playing with her own youngling, and looked over a second laughing too. Hotwire may not have been so daring as Cybershock was – and that, in Arcee's opinion, was hardly a terrible thing – but still he was clearly having fun.

Arcee watched, smiling, as Speedbreaker kneeled down on the ledge in watery oil just past her knees, holding her little one tightly while she lifted him up and dunked him lightly into the water, still holding onto him. Hotwire's tiny feet kicked and his arms reached froward, paddling a little. Speedy let go of him, just barely and for only a second. And immediately the youngling lifted his head from the pool, and stood up on the low bottom, grabbing at his carrier's arms.

Cybershock took off swimming again. And Acree watched her carefully, pulled from her thoughts at once in order to intently do so. And the youngling promptly swam along the side pool, in oil metres deep, again with obvious confidence. Quickly she reached the place where her creator still sat half way in the pool, his arms up at once, reaching for her happily.

"Daddy..." the youngling said. Her voice was slightly whinny in a silly playing kind of way. "Jump in and play with me." She paused then a second, looked thoughtful and asked in a serious voice, "can you...?" It was the very first time she had ever questioned whether he could do something, where instead she had always assumed he could do anything even if he simply couldn't.

"I can," Knockout answered quickly. And indeed he could.

Arcee chuckled, mostly to herself, recalling a day while he was still in far worse condition and their youngling had not yet been born. She had been in the very late stages of carrying, and was so little use at all in doing a thing about it, when Bulkhead and Smokescreen had shoved Knockout on his mobility cart too close to the pool's edge close to deep oil, and with only a glance at each other and shared chuckles of laughter, they had dumped him forward, quite unceremoniously into the pool. Her first reaction had been fury mixed of course with panic, and quickly disbelief. But he swam for the surface, not perfectly but safely enough, just as he'd done a few times before. And on his face-plate she saw the biggest laughing grin ever, while she realized only then that he'd clearly allowed the bots at some point higher up the path to unstrap him from the cart.

"Come in here then!" Cybershock exclaimed. And she yanked urgently on his hands. Arcee wanted for a second to warn her, almost purely out of instinct, to be careful. But she saw just as clearly in the very same second, that the youngling was being just as careful as ever.

"No way," Knockout said, with a laughing smirk. And he shook his head dramatically. "Too cold..."

"Is not!" Cybershock argued, tugging again on his hands, and slightly harder this time.

"Is too," Knockout laughed, still shaking his head.

"No it's not. No it's not!" Cybershock protested, giggling as she splashed him as hard as she could, clearly intent on soaking him to prove her point.

Arcee laughed too, as she joined her youngling in her silly game, scooping up watery oil with her cupped hands to promptly dump it over her bondmate's head.

"Hey," Knockout exclaimed, laughing himself. "Just whose side do you suppose you're on?"

"Hers," Arcee answered without a thought, and her optics at once on their youngling. But she stopped a second later, and reaching forward, she rested her hands on the edge of the bench just below the surface of the watery oil, looking at him in slight concern, while she kept an optic on the youngling all the while.

"You alright?" she asked him hesitantly.

The days of sudden processor reboots, were far behind them – not seen since his second malfunction. And though the state of his body was still a ways from perfect, he certainly had the energy level of any bot, and he'd not been unwell in the least in a long while. But still, she knew how much he'd always loved the pool, because he could swim and float even when he still could not walk or stand.

"I'm good," Knockout said quickly. And he smiled at her – a smile that showed he meant it. Arcee smiled back, laughing while she shook her head, understanding at once, that he was getting a good kick out of playing with their youngling.

"Jump in," Cybershock begged again. And once again, she yanked lightly on her creator's arm. But she stopped suddenly and raised her head to look up, high above her, as she floated, treading lightly in the oil.

Arcee looked up at once herself. They all did. And in under a second a winged shadow moved over the pool. All five bots watched shocked and startled, as a second shadow, followed quickly after the first. And heavy metal wing-beats came with the sound, growing louder, as they dropped lower in the sky.

"What is that?" Speedbreaker cried, dismayed. Her optics quickly opened wide, and she leapt out of the pool with Hotwire in her arms, clinging to her while he pouted with fright at her sudden panic. "Wha... what's happening."

"Predicons," Arcee muttered under her intakes, just as soon as the pair of flying beasts moved still lower and dropped toward the far side of the pool. She recognized both SkyLynx and DarkSteel at once, and her spark dropped when she quickly realized she had no real idea what the pair may just do.

"The primitive life, Shockwave brought back from extinction?" Speedy questioned, disbelieving and so clearly shaken, as she stepped steadily backward further away from the pool, with wide open optics.

"Wow!" Cybershock exclaimed, beside her. And the youngling moved slowly to sit herself down on the bench next to her creator, scaring up at the creatures with no fear at all in her optics.

"They served as Autobot allies once," Arcee explained fast, thinking... hoping. "We can only hope they don't suddenly wish to kill us all again."

"Mama look," Cybershock continued, When Arcee, unsure what else to do exactly, snatched her up out of the pool and set her down on the metal ground outside of it. The little bot pointed across the large pool, to the place where the creatures had landed on the far side. "They have a baby too!"

"What?" Arcee muttered, shocked as she kneeled on the ground ready to help her mate, who of course could not get out of the pool easily on his own, if at all. Looking out across the oil, she saw exactly what her daughter was talking about – the still tiny beast, standing in a flying alt mode, between the much larger pair, its tiny wings flapping hard as it jumped from the ground struggling to lift itself into the air.

"Autobots!" DarkSteel roared loudly. And he took to the air again himself, flying quickly over the oil pool toward the gathered ground, before he changed directions unexpectedly in order to circle, in a clear show of intimidation. "This land belongs to us!"

The predicons had been given land at the end of the war – a large chunk of mountainous terrain to the west where the Autobot team had agreed to grant them the right to build their settlement and live out their lives in peace. And live in peace they so far had. No one had seen a single sign of one since the war had ended. At least not until that day. Arcee knew that the pool was outside of the land they had been gifted. And had she been alone she may just have yelled that fact out loud with confidence. But things were different and she know it. Predicons may have fought as allies once, and they never were known to make any trouble the bot population. But they were still unpredictable, and she knew that right then was hardly the time to forget that.

"DarkSteel," she called, somewhat hesitant and only hoping it was hidden well behind mock confidence. She stood on the ground just outside of the pool, looking up with both hands in front of her, to show that she was unarmed. "The council would surely welcome you to bring any land disputes to them, and whatever the outcome of that debate, we would all happily share the oil pool. But I'm out here with one refugee neutral, a disabled fellow Autobot, and two small younglings. We don't need any trouble.

Predicons, she knew well from experience, had respect for any bot who spoke to them as equals who could understand as well as anyone – because of course they could - instead of approaching them as the mindless animals the world once believed them to be. And sure enough, DarkSteel tipped his head to one side just slightly, as he flew, appearing to consider a moment.

"Give us just a moment," Arcee continued, cautiously. "Let us pack up and we will bridge out of here." She paused a second then, considering, before she spoke again, firmly. "Your turn to use a facility on common ground."

"Agreed," the predicon huffed. And turning again in the air, his huge form casting a shadow again as he did so, he flew back toward the opposite bank.

"Speedy," Arcee said quickly. "Call for a ground bridge back. Cybershock, could you push your daddy's mobility cart over here please?" Flustered and shaken, she shook it off the best best she could, and added quickly, "oh, and you'll need to release the hand brake. You remember how?"

"Yep," the youngling answered. But her answer was slow and distracted, and she didn't move to do what was asked at all, busy instead with watching the predicon youngling across the pool.

"Hello," the youngling bot called loud across the pool. Her optics were still fixed on the predicon baby. "My name is Cybershock. What's your name?"

Arcee's optics opened wider than before with her growing dismay, at the careless boldness of her youngling. And barely thinking much about it, she pulled her back gently by an arm, dragging her carefully against her frame before she turned enough to hide the youngling from view of the predicons across the pool. Surprisingly, it was Hotwire, who pushed the mobility cart closer to them. The tiny bot, not even able to see over the back of the machine as he shoved it forward, had stopped his frightened crying, seemingly determined to be useful himself. And he managed to park the thing half facing sideways, and close enough to the pool to almost become dangerous.

"Thank you, Hotwire," Arcee told him, smiling a little. Because of course the little bot had tried his very best.

* * *

 _"Firestorm?" Soundwave asked slowly. His voice was quiet as it usually was. "How do you feel?"_

 _Firestorm looked around the empty medbay - which from her position, sitting up, legs bent comfortably in front of her, on a repair table close to the far wall, looked suddenly so much bigger. Slowly her optics travelled back to him again, and she smiled._

 _"Ah'gooood," she said, smiling slightly bigger._

 _"You aren't... nervious?"_

 _"A'course Ah'am..." Firestorm considered a moment, and slowly her smile faded a little. She looked around the medbay again, with her spark-beat increasing slightly. She took a slow intake of air and smiled again. "Ah'still feel'ready'though. Ah'm uh-kay." She paused again, and laughed a little. "Ta'think I can'walk one'day like en'one else... maybe'Ah part'out da'frame fa'scrap'metal..."_

 _"You will be stepping up your rehabilitation as I understand it?"_

 _"Yeah... Ratchet say'd in'meetin' all'Ah migh'be missing is' strength'an 'co'or'nation soon. Tha'Ah can learn'fass'if Ah'try hard..." Firestorm paused then a second an looked up at Soundwave, who still still beside her. "Ratchet say'yu can'stay wit'mee. Yu goin'too?"_

 _"Of course I will."_

 _The doors far across the medbay slid open then, jamming halfway for a second before finally sliding all the way. And Firestorm felt her tank drop suddenly as they did so. She watched as Ratchet hurried into the medbay. Knockout followed close behind him on the mobility cart, sitting up better then ever, and leaning forward with obvious strength as he drove while he carried supplies in a little crate on his lap. The pair of medics were actively engaged in friendly conversation laughing when they entered the room. And they debated, it quickly seemed, over the genders of Bumblebee and Speedbreaker's soon due twin younglings – whom speedy had decided again to build frames for without learning the genders, insisting she enjoyed the surprise of not knowing, just like it had been with the first child she'd carried._

 _"There's no way she could have a pair of boys," Knockout said dramatically. And he waved the hand not used to drive the cart in the air so quickly he almost sent the supplies right off his knees in doing so. "She's got one already... an apartment full of them? Not a chance! And both will be yellow too. Just like their brother!"_

 _"Remember though that femmes are still far less common among our people," Ratchet countered, chucking "You were lucky in creating one, but many bots won't... ever. Let alone a pair of them. The statistics say she's carrying males. Little orange painted ones. I'm going with that... final answer."_

 _"We shall see my friend," Knockout replied, grinning. And Firestorm saw a second later that he was looking right at her, still grinning. "What do you think?"_

 _"M...Mee?" Firestorm mumbled slowly. And it was, by that point, only the smiles on the medics' faceplates and the causual laughter in the room, that stopped her tank from flipping. She thought a second, glad of something to think about now. "Can'day be... mixed?" She wondered then if her question was ridiculous, and hoped it was not. But she had never known nearly enough twins to be sure._

 _"Mixed as in one male, one female?" Ratchet asked, confirming, and he nodded. "Well sure. It's certainly possible, because Speedy's twins are not split-sparks."_

 _"Den'dat my geuss..." Firestorm replied slowly. "One'boy. One'girl.. orange'an'yellow..."_

 _"You ready to do this?"Ratchet asked, his tone professional and serious now as he turned around to begin fussing with untangling the wires of a monitoring set up that had been parked behind the recharge station. But she still smiled a little in assurance as he worked._

 _"Yeah..." Firestorm answered, slowly. And she realized as she did, just how slow her answer was in her growing nervousness. "Ah'ready..."_

 _"Lay back on the recharge station for me," the old medic said calmly. And his tone was just enough to keep her assured. He grabbed a extra pillow from a cabinet close by, and tossed it onto the recharge station, obviously intending to let her use it as she wished. "Because you aren't in for repairs, your body position is less important. So I'm going to let you get comfortable on there."_

 _"Uh... kay..." Firestorm mumbled, though she did try hard to speak clearly through her fast growing nerves._

 _"Just a bunch of monitor wires first," Ratchet explained, still calmly. And sure enough he held a bundle of them in one hand, while quickly using the other to connect the first couple of them. Knockout worked close by, sorting out a bunch more from another machine. "You're going to connected to a good deal of machinery. Might seem a bit scary for a second, but don't panic."_

 _"Ah'goood," Firestrom answered, mumbling more still more anxiety, But still, she managed a little smile, and saw Soundwave, still close to her, smiling back just as much as he could. He'd left his face covering off even when the medical team had come back, and that made her happy, because she knew he was at least trying his best when it came to trusting others._

 _Her smile faded though as she looked around the medbay yet again. And when someone switched on a bright light somewhere close to her left hand side, her fuel tank flipped and her spark dropped fast in her chamber. She found herself pulling away just a little as Ratchet tried to attach a monitoring wire to the right side of her frame somewhere. And she silently scolded herself for it, because really there was no reason at all for it._

 _"Firestorm – okay," said Soundwave slowly. And she knew at once that his own concern was making him edgy, just because he'd drifted quickly into formal shorthand speech again._

 _"Ah ra'mem'ba lass'time Ah'wass here," Firestorm admitted, however hesitantly at first. It didn't help at all that she had been put back in the same back corner as she'd been in on the day she'd been injured downtown. She understood at once that she was back there now only because of a need for the monitoring set up, but still it suddenly bothered her just to think about it._

 _Knockout gently grabbed her arm and holding her wrist lightly, he turned it over so her hand lay facing upward. And startled, she fought a second against an urge to pull it away, while her spark beat faster with anxiety._

 _"I need to connect a couple of little lines to the energon hoses in your lower arms," he explained patiently, and she watched him lean further forward on his cart, still holding her wrist carefully and more than likely inspecting it for the location of the hose beneath the armour plating. "Likely not the friendliest thing I could possibly do to you, but still hardly the worst. And we figure after talking it over a bit, that running multiple lines like this is still less traumatic than the option of a networking line close to your spark chamber."_

 _Yeah," Firestorm mumbled, relieved._

She had been involved from the very start in just as many details of planning she possibly could have been when it came to her participation in the cybermatter trial. And of all she'd heard and been forewarned about, the possibility of a need for such a networking line was the thing that scared her the most. Still the wires attached to her frame were enough to drive up her feeling of edginess, as she looked around the medbay again quickly, fighting back memories now. And it was a struggle just to hold still and let both members of the medical team work.

"Firestorm," Ratchet's voice said to her suddenly. It sounded so far away, and she understood quickly that she'd been so busy fighting back panic, she had forgotten to even pay attention to him for a moment. "Do you think you're going to be alright?"

"A'course..." she mumbled in under a second, but her voice was slow and shaky, and she realized to hr dismay, just how horrible she sounded because of it. She also realized only then that coolant leaked from her optics in her panic by then and had gone unnoticed for long moments. That, she knew at once, was why he must have questioned her.

"We don't have to continue with this," the old bot said patiently, reminding her again that she still had control in the situation that her own processor, against her conscious will, had made her begin to believe she did not.

Firestorm almost wanted to give up in that moment. To back out and say she was sorry several times, before she hurried away to the safely of either her own room or Soundwave's. The pounding of her spark and the flipping of her tank was becoming more and more unpleasant, and her mind screamed at her to run away from the cause of it all. But she knew as well that she just couldn't. She didn't really want to run away. She only wanted to stop feeling so nervous and uneasy. Backing out now was the easy way, but the easiest thing was not always the best, and she knew that well. She reminded herself of that fact firmly, as she stared at moment at Soundwave's optics, understanding that he supported her whatever her choice now. And finally she stared, determined, at the old medic.

"Ah... Ah wan'ta go'on..." she said shakily. Because she knew so well that if she didn't, an endless number of 'what ifs' would only catch up to her someday

"It's very courageous of you to want to go ahead," Knockout said slowly. And he held her wrist gently, as she tried, instinctively, to pull it away from him. "Arm still. Very good. Remember, things are still more work for me than for some other medibot."

"You may just get sleepy from here," Ratchet said, still calmly, and she looked over at him, surprised to find that the monitor wires and lines were done entirely. The old chuckled must a little, still in obvious assurance. "Not sure if you're going to end up taking a good little nap or not. Either way, you're good."

Firestorm tired to answer – though she had no idea of what exactly she could say in any case, aside from simply more mumbles of accent. But everything began to spin so fast it took her attention off communicating entirely. The went dark as her vision faded quickly, and panic rose up through her frame, as it all spun still faster.

 _"Firestorm," an unfamiliar voice said, speaking to her through the darkness and panic and the spinning. The voice of whoever it was that was speaking to her, was calm and slow, a Cybertronian female, so obviously compassionate and concerned. And the young bot focuesed on it quickly, at least enough to understand that she was laying down somewhere, facedown on some smooth flat surface. Her optics were closed, and unwilling to open them yet she couldn't see a thing. But she was well aware at the very same time that someone, likely the same one that had spoken, was standing close beside her and gently rubbed a hand against the back of her shoulder panel. "Sweetspark, you're fighting hard against the process. Relax. You're okay."_

 _"I can't... I can't move!" Firestorm cried in panic, because she realized in that second that she couldn't. The compassionate stranger just kept on doing exactly what she'd been doing, in a clear effort to calm her._

 _"Because you're panicking, sweetspark," she said patiently. " You need to relax, alright? It'll make it so much easier. You think you can trust me?"_

 _"Where... where am I?" Firestorm managed to question, and she tried her best to follow the advice of the bot she still could not see. She was no longer in the medbay or anywhere on base- that much was obvious at once. Finding some courage, as the spinning slowed, once her focus was off it and on the voice instead, she dared to open her optics at least a little. And she saw a flash of dark purple paint, and shiny silver of whatever it was she was laying down on._

 _"It's a bit tricky to explain." the compassionate stranger said slowly. But still she sounded just as calm as ever, and the calmness of her voice let Firestorm calm down just a little more herself. "Think of it for you I suppose, as a kind of alternate reality somewhere within the collective consciousness of our world." The stranger, seen through still blurry optics as a clearly Cybertronian shaped haze of dark purple and navy blue, sat down lightly on the edge of whatever it was that Firestorm was laying on. And she contained to rub the little bot's shoulder panel gently and slowly. "How do you feel? Is it geting any better?"_

 _"A tiny bit," Firestorm answered, considering a second and relieved to realize she was indeed able to think again. "I... I can move a little now..." and realizing that indeed she could move, though with some great difficulty, she reached out at once with an outstretched hand through the blurriness._

 _"This is so terrible," she continued. Though her body did relax just a little more when the compassionate stranger tightly held the hand she reached out with. "I'm so... cold. My body is in so much pain... It wasn't this way for the others..."_

 _"They didn't resist and struggle like you are," the other bot said kindly. "No one could have told you not to because no one could have known... though I suppose it hardly would have mattered. Squeeze my hand nice and hard if you want to. And take some slow steady intakes. Remember why you wanted to do this? You wanted to make a difference... to be part of something big..."_

 _"I feel better..." Firestorm said slowly, while she kept on intaking slowly just like she was told to. "I did want to... I... I still do..."_

 _The strange bot chuckled just a little. "I figured so. Keep intaking sweetspark. Slowly. Slowly. Allow your body to relax. Good. Just like that."_

 _"It... it feels warmer now," Firestorm said somehow amazed at that. And the pain that had been tearing steadily through her wiring faded away quickly until it was all but gone entirely. She felt herself smile with her usual bright grin, and she looked up into a shiny silver face-plate, that smiled right back as her vision became steadily more and more clear._

 _"Who are you?" she asked slowly. And daring to move far more now, she let go of the stranger's hand and rolled herself over to lay far more comfortably on her back, where she could look around her far more._

 _She was, she understood now, laying somewhere in the middle of a room with bright shinning silver walls all around her. And whatever surface it was she was laying on, the strange bot sure enough sat on the edge of it, still smiling. Firestrom studied the bot for a moment, noticing the bright Autobot symbol she wore on her dark blue and very purple body armour._

 _"My name is Shortwave," the bot said. And she still smiled brightly as she reached out one hand to place it gently on the front of Firestrom's chest panel, as the little bot tried to move far more to see more of the room. "You need to lay still now, okay."_

 _"How... how much longer...?"_

 _"We can't possibly know exactly. It's all still an experiment, remember. So much no one can know yet..."_

 _"I understand," Firestorm said. She felt the stranger bot take her hand again, and she smiled a little, grateful for the comfort, while she took another slow intake and remained still as instructed. Too slowly though, her processor began to catch up to her and the name the bot had given her a moment before make her blink in disbelief._

 _"Shortwave?" she mumbled in shock. And a sense of hope welled up through her spark just as quickly as she tried to push it away. She blinked again at the familiarity of the darkest blue and purple colours. She noticed the bot's wings for the first time, and realized only then that this bot was clearly a flyer... And an Autobot?_

 _"Soundwave always was the light of my life," Shortwave said smiling brighter by then. "He was the reason I lived when every other circumstance made me think of giving up on it all. Now you are his reason... I used to worry so much that he'd never find love. That he was just too different to even know how..."_

 _"Are you really still alive?" Firestrom asked, bolder now. She had to try – had to know._

 _"Yes," Shortwave answered just as though it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. She smiled a moment longer, gently stopped Firestrom from moving again, and finally chuckled just a little under her intakes. Firestorm noticed for the first time then just how much her laugh sounded like Soundwave's did the few times he let her hear him laughing. "Of course I might not remember meeting you if we ever were to meet in normal reality... Consciousness is complicated."_

 _"There's so much I need to know, because Soundwave needs to know and I need to tell him," Firestorm said, quickly. Her excitement made it hard to lay still now and she found herself lifting her hands to wave them about as she spoke, as she so often tended to do when so excited by anything. And Shortwave gently stopped her again, muttered at her just as gently to please lay still._

 _"How did you survive?" Firestorm asked quickly. And she noticed only then that her speaking voice sounded 'normal,' and had all along. "You're really an Autobot? Where are you? Still in space somewhere? Are you coming home?"_

 _"Firestorm," the blue and purple flyer said firmly, instead of giving any answer at all. "It's time to wake up now, sweetspark..."_

 _Firestorm tried for a moment to protest. To argue that she wasn't ready to wake up just yet. That although not long before she was so anxious for the entire experience to be over just as fast as possible, she felt fine now and wanted to stay for a while where she was, if only to keep on conversing with the bot she had met. But with the too familiar feeling to any bot of being yanked all to soon from recharge in the midst of a beautiful dream, waking reality came too quickly into focus again. And she found herself laying again in the medbay inside the Autobot base._

 _Ratchet stood close beside her, as she lay on a recharge station close to the room. And she blinked her optics at him, as he powered up a scanner, forcing herself to hold still, as he slowly scanned her and then did it again, jotting down fast notes on a data pad he held in his hand._

 _"Ratchet..." she mumbled at him, looking all around the medbay as well as she could from her current position. "Where... where is Soundwave?"_

 _"For a while at first, it wasn't going well," the old medic answered, explaining slowly as he put the data pad down on a worktable behind him. He took a step then closer to her and for a moment he just looked down at her, looking her in the optics with compassion clear in his expression. And it was more than obvious he felt bad somehow. "We were maybe moments in before you started crying horribly, your body shaking, clearly in pain. And the monitors were giving us some frightening readings. Soundwave stayed a while. He kept on taking to you... thouhg I have no reason to think you could hear him by then. It got to be too much and he finally just ran for it. Firestorm, I told him not to do that. He told me he was sorry, but he just couldn't..." the old bot stood a second just shaking his head, before he went on. "It all started looking better, and I knew you'd be okay. But he wouldn't come back. A student found him on a bench in the courtyard, shocked and shaken, refusing to talk to her. I... can't say I agree with his behaviour. But I do think I understand it. I comm'd Bulkhead. Asked him to deal with this. Oddly enough, Bulk' is it seems, aside from you of course, is the bot around here who can actually reason with that fellow. He'll talk some sense into him..." He shook his head harder a second before he added, muttering, as an obvious afterthought, "or possibly knock some sense into him. Whatever the case may just be."_

 _"It isn't Soundwave's fault..." Firestorm mumbled sleepily, meaning it entirely. And she smiled a little to show that she really did understand. She closed her optics again, tried from the medication she knew she'd been giving. But Ratchet shook her gently by the arm, forcing her awake again quickly, forcing her to focus, as he held his arms out in front of him._

 _"Arms up," he said gently. "Both hands out straight, just like mine."_

 _"Well I can see quickly that the constant shaking is far better," he said when she complied, doing the very best she could despite her tiredness. "Let's try to get you sitting up for a second or two, and then you can take a little nap."_

 _"Your seated balance is better,' the old bot commented, and Firestrom smiled just a little, glad to hear him speaking to her directly, as he had always done when so many in her life had never seemed bothered to do. "I'd like to see you stand and then walk as well, but we'll wait until later for that."_

 _"Ratchet..." Firestorm mumbled a second later, far more interested in anything but what he was saying to her, and tring hard to keep herself fully awake while he helped her lay back down again. "Soundwave's carrier... please check the records for the Autobot side. I know you said she wouldn't be Autobot. I know. But please... what if you were wrong?"_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes/ Firstly thanks again for continuing to follow this. I'm still open not only to constructive criticism (which can only serve to make any writer better,) but also to suggestions and your ideas. Any plot holes left anywhere you would like to see filled? Let me know. Any characters you, you want to see what ever become of? Ask and I might just tell you in the writting of a future chapter.**

 **I had someone ask recently in a review if I work in rehab or healthcare. I meant to add an answer to last chapter's notes and forgot all about it. No, I don't at all. Funny enough I actually work in retail. I suppose I've just always had an interest in, and enjoy writing, the kind of stuff I've been writing. That said, some of this story and certain part one, has taken a decent amount of research regarding the medical type stuff, because of course it's not my field.**

 **Warning for this chapter. This one involves horrible and devastating damage to a youngling bot (Not Cybershock or Hotwire, nobody panic.) But because I tend to write the bots with obvious human qualities, this would correspond quite closely to a critically injured child. I have no idea if this kind of thing requires warnings, but since I know a lot of people have children, I don't want to offend anyone with triggers over such things.**

 _"That youngling is defective and slow," Soundwave heard his creator yell loudly over the sound of rattling pipes in the ceiling somewhere above. "That bot mocked me in the street today because of him and what he is! I won't have it, do you hear me. I won't be less because you gave me a broken creaton! That.. that creature... makes a fool of me again with his vocalizer malfunctions and his social misstepping; mark my words, Shortwave. I will kill him!"_

" _Stop!" his carrier screamed right back over the sound of smashing glass – a familiar sound of an energon container thrown to the floor in his creator's drunken rage._

 _And Soundwave lay, huddled just as close as he could get to his drafty wall, on top of the pad he used for recharging on, and wished just as hard as he could that he carrier would be quiet. She never closed her mouth when it seemed she too wisely often should have done so just to save herself. And every time she refused to do so, she got hurt – badly._

 _"For Primus' sake, stop," she sure enough yelled, even as heavy footsteps crossed the living room, in heavy uneven long stomps. "He's your creation too. Even if after all these years you cannot love and value me as more than the gift of property that was given to you to own - love and value him. You made him. You gave him his existence!"_

 _"His existence was my greatest mistake. You think for a moment I wanted to sire the offspring of a slave under my ownership? Do not forget your place. I give you freedom, because I'm far from a monster. But you will never be free. That... creature you call a beloved creation missteps ever again, one single time... he's dead!"_

 _"Don't. You. Ever. Touch. Him."_

 _"I should never have let you carry a newspark to term. I never should have allowed you to build a frame and be carrier to a youngling. I figured I could easily have used his life just to keep you in line. But you've been nothing but disobedient and brazen ever since that... child has been. And you get your hands of me. Shortwave, if you ever grab me again out of turn, I'll not hesitate a second to rip your arm clean off your frame!"_

 _"I'd have wished long before now for death at your own hand if I didn't have Soundwave to think of and care for..."_ _His carrier was crying now, sobbing hard and gasping as she spoke. And Soundwave pulled the thin cover over his head, fighting back loud cries of his own, as he wished beyond anything that she would stop that in that instant. Nothing drove his creator over the edge of his limited patience faster than tears. And any tears from her drove him to new levels of violence in seconds. Sure enough it was in seemingly under a second that her cries were met with loud metallic clanging and the sound of her screaming now, as his huge heavy fists appeared from the sound, to pound dents into her much smaller frame._

 _"You might just be due for a good flogging!" Soundwave heard his creator scream in rage over the endless noise. He wished in that moment for the first time ever in his short life, that he had not been created at all. Logical, he reasoned shaking horribly, that his carrier would suffer so much less day day and out, if he had ot existed to cause his creator's rages. "I'll make you fetch the whip. Or better, I'll wake that busted freak youngling of yours and make him get it for me!"_

 _"Don't call Soundwave such things," His carrier spoke back, still well enough out of turn to place herself in all too obvious danger. But at least the crying had stopped, and she now yelled in rage of her own. "Please don't call him broken and a freak. You call him slow, but he's not slow at all. You'd see if you gave him a chance that he's surely among the smartest younglings the city has ever seen... When he's faceplate to faceplate with you he barely speaks a word and when he does it's all back to front. But that's because you make him fear for his tiny life. He talks to me, and he says amazing things. Insightful, smart and beautiful things. And he can understand every single word you say to and about him! You call him a mistake, but he's not one to me. He's my youngling, I love him and I'd give up anything to hear his creator say he loves him too!"_

 _"I told you to keep your filthy hands off me," his creator roared in reply. And Soundwave, still burried in his bedding on a pad on a cold floor of an apartment storage room, first cringed and then shook with fright at understanding she had touched him again and broke the rules. He pulled the cover higher up and tighter around himself and he hoped for all he could that he could die sometime in the night, to save her from breaking more and more rules in order to protect him._

A light was on behind the half open door of the tiny wash station. And it lit the room, enough to be disruptive. Soundwave knew at once that that was exactly what had woken him from recharge. And he sat himself up quickly on the recharge station, alarmed instantly over the presence of a light he knew he had not turned on himself. Laserbeak could certainly operate lighting herself, and she certainly did so. But Soundwave saw her at once, on her favoured perch above his work desk, and clearly in recharge. And that aside, she had little reason to be turning on lights in the night, and she would never leave it that way for even less reason.

Firestorm crept around the wash station door then, and Soundwave felt the alarm leave his processor and body at once. She'd stayed with him that night. She'd returned with him to his room after Ratchet had dismissed her from the medbay that evening. And because she'd fallen so fast into recharge, her body pressed tightly against his, her two little hands holding one of his much larger ones tightly, he lacked al spark to wake her again. And for a moment he felt a strong sense of dismay and embarrassment over having forgotten all about her presence in his room at all.

"I woke you up..." she mumbled, obviously regretful from the wash station doorway. Her walking and standing balance had shown improvement even in the last day he noted quickly - proud of her at once, as he watched her walk with slow and careful, but still steady steps across his living space. "I wanted a quick shower. I... hope you don't mind..."

"I don't mind," Soundwave answered. And he looked at her a moment across the room, before he fianlly moved to hold out a hand, gesturing to his recharge station. "Firestorm, come here..."

The little white and yellow bot walked over, just as quickly as she could. And she sat at once on the edge of the recharge station, staying there for just a moment before she lay down on it, resting against him again, with a bright smile across her face-plate.

"Firestorm, I am... sorry," Soundwave said slowly. And the little bot's smile turned quickly to a look of obvious confusion, as she half sat up again, propped on a bent elbow joint.

"What do you have to possibly be sorry for?" she asked him, laughing.

But Soundwave was entirely serious. And he looked at her intently, more than well aware of the sad expression that quickly covered his face-plate. "I... I left you in the medical bay. I promised I would stay and still I left you anyway. It was weak and terrible of me."

"No it wasn't," Firestorm said at once. And she reached out to take one of of his hands again in both of hers. "Ratchet is less than impressed. He made that quite perfectly clear. But I understand. No one knows you as well as I do now – well, aside from Laserbeak of course. It wasn't your fault."

"I dreamed again of my youngling-hood," Soundwave said, after the pair had lay silently for many long moments in a once again darkened room.

"Oh?" Firestorm raised her head curiously, from where it had been, resting against the side of Soundwave's body. She leaned up on an elbow again, and smiled a little in the darkness, urging him without any need for words at all, to explain.

"I dreamed of one night, like so many others. Awake in the night, listening while my creator first yelled and then beat on my carrier, angry because I simply existed. That was the very night I ever thought I wanted to die... that perhaps everything might be better off if only I was gone."

"I hope to Primus, your creator is dead now." Firestrom knew that was not very kind of her. The Autobots she knew so well would never have approved of such harsh words, and less so from a small young bot like her. But Firestrom was not an Autobot, and frankly she had never agreed to agree with every single thing they did and said and believed in.

"There's little chance we'll ever know for sure," Soundwave said.

"I know that. But... I still I can hope." Firestorm lowered her head again to rest again him comfortably. And she smiled a little when he held the hand she held out to him. "No bot should ever have the right to make his own tiny youngling feel like he wants to die in childhood."

"They shouldn't. And I realize that simple wisdom only well after the fact..."

"Someday you'll have your own youngling," Firestorm said, serious and smiling again. "There are little bots everywhere now. You'll create one more. And you can teach it to trust and to love, to be everything that brute you call a creator didn't have the sense to let you wanna be..."

"Never," Soundwave said quietly in the darkness. And beside him, Firestorm half say up again to stare at him blinking. "I will never be a creator. That's a thing I will never compromise on."

* * *

"Mama!" Cybershock's loud crying scream woke Arcee from recharge at once. And she sat up slowly on the recharge station she share with her mate, just waiting to see if her youngling would yell again, or settle herself back into recharge.

"Mama! Daddy!' the youngling shrieked a second later, from her own little room. And the screaming was plenty loud enough to carry well down the hall, filling the apartment.

"Arcee," Knockout said quietly. And he opened his optics beside her in their darkened room. "I think I heard..."

"You did," Arcee answered at once. And she wondered a second if she still ought to wait for the little bot to settle herself into recharge. But Cybershock so rarely woke up in the night, and she ever did she so rarely screamed and wailed like that. Those rare times she did wake up and scream, she knew well to yell only for her carrier, because her creator could not half as easily get himself up to help her quickly.

"Mamaaaaaa! Daddy!"

"I'll go and see to her," Arcee decided out loud. And she smiled assurance at her mate as she got to her feet. "I'm sure she's fine."

Cybershock sat huddled on her small recharge station, in her small room, when Arcee looked past her half open door. Her black and white checkered cover was tight around her little frame, and she looked around with wide and tear-filled optics, while she she trembled a little.

"Mama..." she whimpered, with her arms outstretched just as soon as she saw her carrier in the doorway.

"It's alright, baby..." Arcee said gently. And she crossed the room in the near darkness before she reached the little lamp on a side table, and turned it on to its dimmest setting, before she sat down lightly on the edge of the recharge station. She took the little bot in her arms and held her tightly against her frame, feeling the little one's shaking lessen at once in doing so. "What's wrong?"

"I... I..." Cybershock sputtered and cried, clearly trying hard to explain. "I dreamed of something... terrible!" She looked up with her optics still filled with her coolant tears, before her head dropped to Arcee's shoulder panel in her need for assurance. "I... I can't ra-member it now. Just that it scared me..."

"Well, whatever it was, you know it wasn't real, right?"

"I know it wasn't real," Cybershock said. Her voice was shaky now, but her tears had stopped. "Of course it wasn't real, Mama. But... but I was still scared anyway..." the youngling moved ehr head again from her carrier's shoulder panel so that she could look up into her opics. And she smiled just a little, with the trusting innocently only a child was able to possess. "I'm sorry for screaming like that, Mama."

"Hey. These things happen once in a while. And some dreams can certainly scare you good," Arcee stood up again, this time with Cybershock in her arms. She shifted the little bot's considerable weight, just to be sure she wouldn't fall, and slowly she walked with her like that from the room back toward her own. "let's go see your creator a minute."

To Arcee's surprise, Knockout was sitting up on the edge of their recharge station, when she got back to their room. And it was clear that was considering getting himself onto his mobility cart – which he often did now, by pulling himself, for the short time he could, to standing for a second with help from the grab bars on the side of the recharge station, before turning a little and dropping to sitting again on the cart's seat. When he saw the youngling though, held tightly in his mate's arms, he instead moved himself to sit on the recharge station with his legs in front of him. And he held his arms out at once to take the little bot from her.

"I had a bad dream, Daddy," Cybershock explained for herself. And she happily climbed in beside him. "Mama ra-minded me it wasn't real."

"It's wonderful that you remembered that," Knockout said. And he smiled, hugging her close to him while Arcee just stood by, smiling. "Because you and Mama are both right, you know. Dreams are never real... no matter how real they may seem at times."

The presence of her family, and just being out of the dark a short while, so clearly helped the youngling to calm herself down. Because she smiled happily as she sat on the recharge station for a few moments. And finally by her own choice she climbed off again, to stand on the floor.

"I'm going back to recharge," she said, her little voice almost comically mature in it's serious tone. "It's late, and I'm tired." She paused a second and added, as a clear afterthought before she walked away, "I'm leaving my light on though..."

"We really do have the best youngling on Cybertron," Knockout mused, as his mate lay back down close beside him.

"We do," Arcee answered. But as she did so, she considered almost a little sadly. And she added, "Far too independent though at times. I... sometimes wish she needed us more. She's not even five yet..."

"I..." Knockout began to say. But Acree heard nothing else of what he said, past the noise of loud screaming and panic far down on the street below.

Every instinct she had, to protect the innocent of the new city, kicked hard at once into gear. And she jumped to her feet again in a single move, before hurrying to the window of the recharge room.

"What is it?" Knockout questioned quickly, in obvious concern, over squealing brakes of alt modes far below. "Should I get up? I can get up."

Arcee yanked the window open, and poked her head out so that she could do a far better job of looking down to the roadway ten floors below. And quickly she worked to make sense of the scene. Headlights were on everywhere, on the fronts of bots who had stopped beside the walkway. And many of those lights pointed, it seemed to a place just past that walkway, where something dingy green lay on the rough metal of unfinished ground, in front of residential building five, across the street.

"I'm not sure yet," Arcee answered in reply to her mate's question. And with her head still halfway out the window - aware all the while of other windows open around her and filled with bots doing much the same thing – she looked again and closer.

Her optics went at once right back to the dingy light green on the ground below. Made of metal, she saw, bent and twisted at angles, with peeling paint on the top facing side that torn away from burnt, super-heated finish. And the whole thing was moving. Another screem – one of terror and horrible pain reached her ears quickly from ten floors down, and she realized that the noise had come from the metal on the ground. A living bot. And a youngling by the tiny size of it.

"Knockout," Arcee exclaimed quickly, whipping around in a single motion to face him, before she hurried to toward him in an effort to do everything quickly. "You've got to get up. This could well be a serious medical emergency."

"Mama?" Cybershock questioned, appearing once again, in the doorway of the room. "Wha' happened outside? There are bots and lights everywhere. An... an' I can hear someone screaming."

"Stay inside, Cybershock," Arcee told the youngling quickly. She turned a second to her mate then, ready to help him, by either offering an arm, or holding the cart steady. But she saw there was no need at all, because he was already on safely with no help at all. So she turned back to the youngling again. "Wait for us in here. We'll be right back. We need to see if we can help." Cybershock nodded once and her creators were off down the hall at once, out the apartment door and down the corridor beyond.

#####

"Knockout! Arcee!" a red, white and bright silver bot screamed urgently, as soon as the pair had crossed the dark and nearly empty street. Arcee recognized him, after a second of thinking about it, as a bot they'd seen only casually a few times in the market – A vendor, she realized in once more second. They visited his stall often, because he was always well stocked with the educational vid-discs their youngling so enjoyed. But the bot, usually chatty in the market and playful with the little one, was now at present panicked. And his optics moved toward the crowd, still around the small bot on the ground.

"There must be something you can do."

"Of course," Arcee said, nodding as she began immediately to push her way gently into the panicking crowd. Knockout rolled behind her on his cart. But he struggled far more, as many of the bots that stepped aside for his mate, would not move for him.

"Move!" hollered a bot at the front of the gathered group. His optics blazed with frustration, and his hands waved in the air in furious desperation. He was Speedbreaker's creator, Crankshaft. Arcee remembered that at once and nodded thanks while she shot a furious gaze from her own optics at the crowd. "Everybody, get out of his way!"

The youngling bot on the ground was still very young. Arcee saw that, to her horror, just as soon as she reached the place where she lay. A tiny bot little older it seemed than her own Cybershock. A second frame like her own youngling, based on her size. And the poor child lay, still conscious, on the rough metal ground, her body squirming weak and helpless, the upper right side of her body damaged horribly. The arm and shoulder panel had taken the worst of it – the metal melted and peeled back in large pieces down to bare and sparking wires beneath it all. But the sides of the body panels were visibly charred and heated too, blackened in places from whatever could possibly have caused this mess. And her armor on so much of her body not damaged, had the strange appearance of being wet and sticky.

"I need something to wrap her in," Knockout said, after a second of cursing under his intakes over not having anything usable for such a purpose in his medkit. "Clean wash station towels will work, unused cleaning rags... but I need it wet, and not freezing cold!"

"I... I'm on it..." Speedbreaker's creator mumbled quickly in reply. He was visibly shaken up just as soon as he had stepped closer to the youngling bot hismelf. And now he backed out of the crowd again, before transforming at once to the form of a ground vehicle, that peeled away with a roar of an engine and a sequel of tires. He was surely speeding, by the sound of it, but now it hardly mattered.

"Does anybody have any idea where this youngling came from?" Arcee questioned of the crowd quickly. And she made sure as she did that her voice left no room for nonsense from any of them. The tiny bot's optics were filled with coolant. And her tears fell down her dull green face-place while she whimpered horribly in what was so clearly terrible pain.

For a long moment that dragged on far too long, there were only murmurs of uncertainly, from at least fifteen bots who all stood helpless without an idea of what to do by stand and panic. Most of the bots that stood crowded around had only stopped after because others had already done so. And a couple that had stopped early on, had found her already out there as she was.

"She ran from somewhere over there," someone called out finally, while he gestured toward the closest edge of 'downtown.' An electronics shop, that never seemed to ever be open for business. And he seemed a bot who knew just what he was talking about. "I... saw her run away from the side door to make it this far running, and then she just fell down here."

"There?" Arcee confirmed. And her optics moved in that direction, as she kneeled fast on the ground beside the little bot. She feared she may just find more chaos – it would only make sense to. And she understood, to her growing fright, that someone did seem to live there, in an apartment on top. But nothing at all seemed amiss near the mentioned building at all

"Arcee," Knockout said, speaking quickly. And his own tone was just as serious as hers. "I need you to try to held her still a second for me." Quickly, he was powering up his scanner, which Arcee had not even seen him take yet from his med-kit. "Gently as you can of course. I need to get a decent scan of her body for hidden damages."

"Noooo..." the little bot wailed horribly the very second she was touched, however gently. Her feet kicked weakly against the hard metal ground. And the left hand formed a fist, which she barely managed to lift from it's place over her chest panel in panic. The right hand, Arcee saw then, to her shock and horror, was melted away to a mess of metal and wiring barely recognizable at all. "Don't touch, don't touch..."

"Hold still, baby," Arcee said gently to the little bot, and speaking to her just as she would have to her own little one. Both of her hands held only to the left side of the tiny frame, one gently resting on the side the body panel, while the other held the tiny upper arm. But still even there, where the body looked undamaged, she could feel heat radiating from the frame enough that it was noticeable. A strange chemical sort of smell filled the air, and Arcee knew she'd been smelled it all the while, even if she was only just becoming aware of it consciously. "Hold still. I know... I know. I'm sorry. Just hold still now..."

"I can help. I can help," and instantly familiar voice called behind her amid the sound of footsteps running through the crowd.

"'Bee," Arcee cried, barely turning away from the now screaming younling, to look at her teammate, who she reasoned had hurried over from his own home in building three. "Get over here. Hurry."

"Arcee," Bumblebee whispered under his intakes, just as soon as he was on the ground beside her with his own medical kit close to him. "This is... bad. Speedbreaker is on on the commlink with Ratchet. I told her to call just as soon as we saw this mess down here, because I figure we just might need him. But... this looks bad..."

"She'll be okay though..." Arcee said slowly. But her statement was more or less a question now, and one she didn't want to ask at all when it regarded a youngling a tiny as her own.

"I... I don't know," Bumblebee said slowly beside her and still very quiet. And Arcee glanced up then to meet optics with her bondmate, who sat to her dread, on his cart with a scanner in his hand shaking his head to say he wasn't certain either. The tiny bot, still held gently under her hands, had stopped screaming now, and instead she only whimpered steadily, with her optics half closed and dimming.

"I need to be down on the ground," Knockout said quickly. And still sitting on the cart, he shook his head in helpless frustration. "I cant do much of anything this way..."

Getting down, to sit up on the ground was not the simplest thing for him to do. But he certainly could, especially with some help to get down there. He sat often on the floor in his family apartment, and outside there was little difference. Sure enough, with the needed help, and more of it this time so that he could be fast, he'd gotten himself sitting somewhat awkwardly on the rough ground beside the damaged youngling. He hadn't even dropped the scanner he held, in the process of getting there. But he suddenly tossed it aside with a shake of his head, as if he wondered why it was he still held it in the first place. Moving still just as fast as he possibly could in his awkward though still efficient position – sitting on the ground where medical crew would generally work balanced on the knees, only because he simply couldn't do that – he injected a considerable dose of pain medication just as gently as he could into the little bot's left arm. Her whimpers at that turned again to a good loud scream, and she fought and wiggled weakly to move herself away, while she was still held in place.

"Poor baby," Arcee said, mostly to herself now, because they youngling was well beyond reason, and her bondmate was focused on his work entirely just as he should have been. She fought back coolant from her own optics, finally blinking furiously to force it back before a tear escaped, and she kneeled on the ground just shaking her head in devastation. This youngling bot, she knew well, was too scared to think, in too much pain to even try, and she may just have been too young to even understand much – if anything – of what was happening.

"Speedy comm'd back," Bumblebee explained quickly then, And his voice in that second sounded so far away. "Ratchet is hurrying over. And Arcee, she's packing up Hotwire so she can watch Cybershock at your apartment."

"'Bee," Knockout said quickly, speaking to the young student who still kneeled helpless nearby. He was already digging through his med-kit grabbing things he needed while he tossed aside then things he clearly did not half carelessly. "The armor on the entire right arm and shoulder panel is totalled well past salvage. And it's pinching tight against the wiring so badly now it's going to cause permanent damage."

"So... what do we do?" 'Bumblebee questioned. He was anxious, and that was more than obvious by now.

"We will probably need to pull most of the body armor off just as soon as she's transported to medical." Knockout answered quickly.

"Please, please... noooo... noooo..." the youngling whimpered, shaking in terror now beneath Arcee's hands. So clearly she understood everything the medical team was saying. And her optics opened wider again, before they filled instantly with a new wave of tears. The youngling, for all of her panic and seeming distance from most any reason, had certainly understood that much of that she'd just heard said.

Crankshaft returned quickly, from his home above his sweet shop then, and he'd probably set a new speed record in doing it too. He carried a good armload of dampened blue wash station towels, which he stood holding while he asked, worried, if they would work. Knockout took two of them from him at once, reaching behind just as much as he possibly could and somewhat awkwardly at that. Without wasting another second he begin to wrap the them loosely around the youngling's body, before he grabbed another of them to wrap, tighter, around her destroyed arm and shoulder panel. The tiny bot screamed horribly, in frantic wails of terror, trying to escape. And her yelling only grew worse when she couldn't. She was growing still weaker and her fighting only served to weaken her still faster. And Arcee knew that the struggling and screaming, which made her look more conscious than she was, she was slipping away – though whether online or just into unconsciousness it was not fully clear.

"Shhh..." she said, gently as ever. And the hand she'd had rested on the tiny shoulder panel went slowly to the back of a tiny still too warm but otherwise undamaged hand, which she rubbed and patted lightly and steadily, trying desperately to calm the frantic youngling. She was barely holding herself together by now, but she struggled to anyway, as the little bot shrieked again horribly, and started to shake hard, now far beyond nearly frozen with her terror. If anything ever close to what she was seeing now ever happened to her own child, Arcee was thought she would lose it entirely. And she struggled, trembling herself now over this one.

"How about I tell you a story," she said suddenly, the idea coming to her through the fog that was filling her processor. And she struggled a second to think of her own youngling's favourite one, memorized a year ago now, because it was requested so very often. Knockout was so much better than she was at telling stories. He did it most nights unless he was working – when Arcee would try it herself, feeling like she was just never half as good at it, because she could never quite master talking in funny voices as she recited every separate character's lines of dialogue. She still she was determined to do her very best.

"Hurts...," the little bot mumbled horribly. Her screams had stopped again and she looked worse then before, just trying to hold her fast dimming blue optics open in her still clear panic. "P... please... no. Nooooo..."

"You were given some medicine to make it better, " Arcee said in reply to that. And still she talked to this child just like she would have her own. She put her finger tips into the youngling's hand gently. "I know everything hurts, baby. I'm so sorry. Hold my hand for a while and listen to me while I talk to you. Deal?

"'Oh... ok-kay" the youngling mumbled, and her optics locked finally on Arcee's a moment before she closed them entirely. Arcee sighed inwardly in relief at that, because even though the tiny bot still shook and struggled, she knew she had her attention. She relief grew when she felt the tiny frame still held by her free hand, relax a little on the ground.

"You get your disgusting hands off my youngling!" a loud and clearly enraged voice hollered. And Arcee looked up in shock at the appearance of another bot on the scene while she'd been absorbed in her task at hand to notice either heavy footsteps of the noise of an engine. Dismayed, and with anger brewing at once at a bot who dared to yell and scream when it should have clear that he had little need, she looked up quickly to see the bot that had spoken. A dull green follow, she saw at once. Big and brutish, with a snarl of his face-place, and with an integrated blaster transformed from one hand and ready to fire.

"Primus' sake," she exclaimed at once, when she saw how well the blaster was aimed steady at her bondmate's own back.

"Put that away," she said. And as much she she hated to leave the child, who now cried and whimpered again when she had just calmed down so well, she stood up at once to stare the much larger bot in the face-plate. "You don't really want to fire on him. He's a medi-bot. He's only trying to help her."

"Creator..." the youngling on the ground screamed, before her screaming again turned to loud and horrible sobs and and whines of pain. She reached up just as far as she could with the arm that was not damaged, her desperation for him to go closer to her and simply to comfort her was clear in her optics. And when Arcee saw him only glare down at his little bot instead, optics full of detain where she should have seen compassion, it was all she could do not to make a first and knock him flat.

"Would ya rather then, if I fired on you?" the green brute snarled, obviously for more interested in continuing to agree and make a scene, then in his own adly injured youngling. But far short of following through on the threat, he lowered his blaster instead, and stood, still snarling. "Nah. I would never fire on an Autobot. A real one I mean... not that red optic'd, broken, so called defector, scum..."

"Neither the time, nor the place," Arcee growled in warning, sure at once that she didn't like a single thing about this bot. The things he'd said... the tone in which he'd said it, and the weapon he wielded... It was all far too familiar. And quickly now, she remembered a scene made by this bot and his friend once 'downtown.' She remembered how the other bot had hit Knockout hard and for no reason with a heavy bar, while the one she faced now shoved his own tiny youngling into the roadway.

"Get out of here and frag yourself," Arcee growled at him then almost under her intakes entirely and with uncharacteristic rage building in her body. She stepped protectively between the huge and angry bot, and the critically damaged youngling on the ground. "Your little one is injured and badly. She needs emergency care before we are even lift her to take her to the hospital for treatment. And you are the furthest thing for a loving creator I've ever seen, so you can get away from us so my bondmate here might just have a chance to save her."

"No hospital," the huge green brutish bot snarled. And he would have shoved his way right past in that second, had 'Bee not jumped up that second and grabbed him hard by the arm. "No medi-bots. I'm taking her home."

"Are you fragging kidding me?" Arcee demanded, her vice low and her optics blazing blue. She advanced toward the two nearly twice her size then, and did not even think of her blaster, instead making a tight heavy fist, which she held up in his face-plate. "Are you fragging glitched and crazy? I tell you your own youngling is critically damaged, and yes, possibly off-lining! I tell you she can't even be moved yet for transport, it's that bad and urgent. And you think I'm going to let you take her right back home? Like the pit, you're going to take her."

"She's my youngling," the big bot snarled, with a raised fist of his own. "I've got my rights."

"To scrap with your rights," Arcee yelled in his face-plate, with a hardly a care anymore. "Your youngling goes with us. You don't like it, talk to the council tomorrow. Where were you the whole time she was out here damaged? It's been a while. And not a concerned creator in sight! What the frag happened to her in the first place?"

"Our energon dispenser overheated and it blew up," the green brute answered. And his answer was far too quick and way to too simple. It also made so little sense, that it made Acree instantly angrier then ever before.

"Do you so stupidly expect me to believe for a moment that nourishment grade energon, refined for use in a household dispenser, could do this kind of damage? One could start a fire instead of shutting down, in the case of overheating. I'l give you that one. But to explode with enough sudden heat to nearly blow your own baby's arm to pieces! To melt her body armour to her frame!" Arcee looked back a second to the youngling, who was once again shrieking and wailing in pain and terror, her optics wide and her body shaking enough to cause more obvious pain, while 'Bee and Knockout struggled to power her down.

"I told you to get away from my youngling," the green brute bellowed. And he pulled his attention suddenly back away from Arcee and the dispute with her entirely. To scream threateningly at Knockout – who ignored him entirely, his focus on his tiny patient.

"Filthy, slaggin 'con!" the big bot yelled at him then. And he'd kicked the disabled medi-bot hard in his upper left side panel, before anyone had ever time to register that he did indeed have the nerve to do such a thing. He kicked him again, this time hitting him in the upper chest-plate. And it was obvious he'd been aiming for the faceplate instead, missing only by chance and bad aim. The crowd, slowly thinning now but many still gathered, gasped in shock and disbelief at such behaviour, toward a bot so clearly disabled and trying to save a tiny life. But the bots out that night were, as all luck would have it, not the sort known to be fighters in the least. And the stood, for the most part, helpless and gasping, as Knockout was kicked again, while he began to beg the brute to stop.

"You fragging glitch!" Arcee shouted over the growing noise of gasping bots and clanging metal against metal. She pulled her own blaster, because it really seemed her last resort. And she aimed it square at the chest panel of the big green brute. With her other hand though she grabbed hard for his arm in hopes of somehow yanking him back, still hoping she didn't actually need to shoot anyone that night.

Her optics locked a second on 'Bee's while he still worked kneeling beside the youngling on the ground. He moved slightly, placing himself between the tiny bot and the violence near by, and so clearly tried his best to comfort the little one while he worked, trying hard now to secure her left arm – or what remained of it – against her body, and ready for transport. Arcee knee 'Bee could not help her, or her mate. He was staying with the patient, just like any dedicated medic. But she saw in his optics, in the second they locked, and before he looked away again, his clear agreement that she should shoot if she had to.

A loud resounding clang filled and air then out of nowhere. And the brute fall backwards to the street unconscious, settling the matter before she could. And Arcee looked up at once, to see Ratchet, standing close to the newly fallen bot and waving his familiar old wrench in the air.

#####

"You be a good little bot for the medics, okay?" Arcee said to the youngling.

And the tiny bot, wrapped securely now in an insulated metallic emergency blanket that Ratchet had brought down with him – the entire thing folded well around her, fastened with clips, and covering all but her face-plate – whimpered as her frame was shifted slightly. But she smiled too, a weak but genuine childish smile, possible now only after a second good dose of medication

"You coming wit' us?" she asked, optics closing now. 'Bee never had been successful in powering the younging down, obviously, after Knockout had been forced away from helping him. She'd struggled and squealed, screamed like she was dying just from fright – and the young student, in his inexperience, had at that point left well enough alone.

"No," Arcee said. And she shook her head for a second, thinking of her own youngling, who needed her too. And there was her bondmate as well. He'd refused at first mention of it, to go to medical himself as a patient, on the promise to been see in the morning, before he reported for his own duty shift. "I can't go with you. But, 'Bee is going with you..." she gestured with her optics toward her black and yellow teammate, who stood nervously beside Ratchet, and ready as ever to go when duty called.

"I... dun' wanna go ta medical..." the tiny bot said, and tears formed once more in her optics. She was sleepier than ever now from medication, even if said medication did make her feel so obviously better. And her voice was just slightly mumbled because of it.

The youngling bot, it was more than sadly obvious, just wanted her whole terrifying night to be done with. Like any small youngling, she wanted to be home, safe in a recharge station, where she would wake up in the light of day to play and learn. But her whole ordeal was just just beginning now. Arcee imagined easily that this child's path would be a long one, far to long for one so little. And she knew the youngling understood it too, at least on a base level. She understood it and he didn't like it. She feared it terribly.

"It's alright," Arcee said gently. She wished for just a second that she could hold the youngling's hand again, to assure her a moment. But she couldn't do so because it was of course, well hidden, bundled in under the metallic cover she was packed up in. "Ratchet is a wonderful medic. He'll have you fixed up, good as new in no time. And... tomorrow I'll come and see you for a minute."

And with hands clenched again into tight and heavy fists, that barely relaxed again, even when Knockout - back on his cart now and driving it just fine giving his recent attack - held one of her hands lightly in assurance of everything at once, she fought back a new wave of anger, as she watched her teammates leave quickly with the little bot.

"That was not an overheated dispenser," she mumbled to her bondmate, allowing herself to boil now with rage, just as soon as the medical team were out of sight with the youngling. "Something is going on here and I don't like it. Not when this nonsense happens on my home world. Not when baby younglings turn up close to offline..."

"You're right, Arcee," Knockout said. He began to drive forward on the cart, pulling her gently beside him, still holding her hand in his free one. Carefully, he crossed the road and made for their own building nearby. "There's something going on, and it could well be something very bad. Little doubt Ultra Magnus and the the patrol will want to talk to us tomorrow. I'll prepare a medical report for the little one..." he paused a second, shifting in his seat, and clearly uncomfortable from his injuries, and needing to lay down a good while. "Not to mention the one I'll get from Ratchet for myself."

* * *

Soundwave's spark was heavy with remorse as he flew away from the city. And that was a feeling he was far from used to. He shoved the emotion away, firing his engines as he flew, building speed just as though he could outrun his own emotions if he just flew fast enough.

Firestorm, he knew, lay recharging exactly where he'd left her – alone on his recharge station, under the cover he'd tucked around her frame just as carefully as he could have managed to do, right before he'd left her in a hurry.

She'd fallen so fact back onto the recharge, only because he'd forced her into into it with an energy blast from his cable, in the middle of her pleading with him to listen to her. He had forced his will upon her. He had not harmed her in doing it – he'd made sure of that – sending just enough of a blast to send her processor offline. and he'd done it before she even realized what it was he'd done. She would wake up again by the time the sun was up. He reminded himself of that as he flew. She would wake up recharged and fine. He knew enough of his own mental power to know that. But still he'd done it... and now, even in his flying alt mode, he shook with the regret of it, so badly that his engine nearly stalled and sputtered.

 **'** **Soundwave!'** A message blasted over his commlink. The fifth one he'd received now since the first that night, received before he'd left the base. He'd been about to go off to recharge then. And his sleepy little Firestorm reached up to hold his hands, with a smile on her face-plate. The night had been so 'normal.' Soundwave reflected for the first time, on how he'd come to enjoy his new unexpected normal.

 **'Soundwave I am well aware you must surely be receiving. Respond immediately!'**

Soundwave wondered then if perhaps he ought to turn back, inform the Autobots of everything he currently knew, even though all he knew was still so very little. And some part of his processor, a part of himself he had only assumed had surely died centuries before, screamed at him to do exactly that. But some other part, screamed far louder still to keep on going – to proceed because his nature and his circumstance really had given him so little choice but to do exactly that.

The 'bots had been good to him. Despite his faction, his record for violence and worse, their medic had once saved his life. They'd come to be friends - or at least mostly so. Most of the Autobot team, even if many were still so clearly uneasy in his presence, were civil to him. And few had ever been less than neighborly in the very least. He'd watched them for a good while by now, as they went about just living out their lives. And for the first time in his long life, he wanted for himself exactly what they had.

Outside of the city, in the middle of the night, the world was dark. Almost no lights had been wired anywhere yet, and the moons high above gave only dull dim glow, reflecting feebly against the metal of the ground. Soundwave flew low in the sky, his flying alt mode barely above the highest of the low cliffs and hills that dotted the landscape. He powered on his nighttime lights, trying for just a little more lighting to aid him in sight navigation, and reflected oddly on how he had almost come to believe it was easier for him to fly while blind and hacking his own system. The changes to his vision mattered little in daylight. He had relearned in days how to see like anyone else did. But at night, in the darkness, it was an entirely different way of seeing anything, and it was beginning to make his head hurt. Looking down, at obstacles that covered the ground, sure he was seeing only some of anything down there with his still readapting optics Soundwave was glad as ever to be a flyer. He felt safer in the air.

Below him, the the rocky, rutted ground appeared to give way to a smooth, flat plane that ran for endless miles. And though Soundwave knew he should have known it well, he could not allow himself to trust his still strange night vision, to be sure. He checked his maps, and would have nodded his head a little in understanding, if he had been in bot mode and could have. He was, sure enough right over the south east edge of the sea of rust. That far already? And still the sky around him was black. He knew then that he was making good time. With a push of his engine, he banked a little to the right and turned sharp to the west, certain now he knew exactly where he was going. And he shuddered suddenly, his flying alt mode rocking a little, first to the left and then to the right, as fly right over a place where he'd once been shot right from the sky.

That night seemed still so recent, and indeed it certainly was – only a few short years ago, and a near blink of an optic really, to a bot who'd lived for centuries. But it seemed, at the same time so long ago too. Because a lot truly could happen within a proverbial blink of an optic. He'd seen the end to a war that his very spark had given up all hope of ever seeing an end to. He'd learned to speak up again, to use his vocal processor because he simply wanted to talk sometimes, instead of simply out of dreaded necessity. And he'd found love, in a life where such a notion had barely even occurred to him once before as a passing thought.

His Firestorm. Inwardly he shook his head with confusion at that very thought, and wondered with unease, just how wrong it might have been to call Firestorm 'his.' She didn't belong to him. She belonged to no one. No bot would ever again own another, and of that he had never stopped being relieved. But... his processor screamed loudly as he flew... could 'his' not mean something entirely different now? Yes, Firestorm was 'his' because she wanted to be. But did that not also make him 'hers'? They could truly be a pair, best friends, trusting lovers... bondmates?

No! His processor screamed loudly. No no! It could never be. He'd told her so before, and he knew she understood. He'd never once defied logic and sense before. Never given more than a fast passing thought to anything beyond the limits of his circumstance in life. Why now did he wish it could be different.

 **'174-34 East. 78-39 North-east...'**

Coordinates, repeated for the second time by a bot that grew so predictably more impatient. A bot not used to waiting for anyone or anything. And Soundwave's spark dropped at simply hearing another transmission on his comm-link. He wished it truly could turn back. But suddenly it was no longer an option at all, and he knew it never really was. He was too well programmed to obedience to even think of backing down now.

So he turned a little more, banking hard to the left, narrowly missing the top of some strange abandoned mess of a structure that was not listed on his map and that his optics had almost failed to spot in the darkness. And he remembered Firestrom again, laying still in her unwilling recharge. He remembered that for a moment her optics had filled with worried tears of coolant, because he was not behaving like the bot she'd come to know while he listened to his comm. He remembered that he;d raised his voice to her shouting a warning to stay out of something she could never understand, when she'd begged him not to leave without notice in the dark of night. A lap was broken to pieces in his living space. He remembered that too, and realized she must have hit it with her still not fully coordinated hand, while she tried getting to her feet to quickly in despair, holding her ground when any other would have backed down.

The last last thing he'd ever said to her during civilized and 'normal' conversation, was that she would never carry his youngling...

* * *

"It's just surface damage, thankfully, from the look of things," Ratchet said. But he pulled out a med-scanner anyway, just to be sure, used it quickly, and nodded at the readings on the little screen. "I don't see any sign of broken lines or energon pooling underneath those body panels..." He locked optics then for a second with Knockout, who sat on his mobility cart, putting up with all the inspections and scans with just as much patience as he could manage in his own haste to start his own workday.

He had patient files to update, consultations to confirm, and rounds to make. And there was little doubt at all in anyone's mind either, just where his rounds would began that morning. He'd not seen his tiny youngling patient, since he'd handed her over to Ratchet the night before. He'd not yet had a chance to check for a single update.

For every doubt the 'bots might once have had about the matter, thee was certainly no denying anymore that Knockout, of any bot on Cybertron had a certain affinity for the tiniest of damaged bots. And strangely – or perhaps not so strangely anymore – he was good with every one of them. He never failed, when working on the youngling ward, to pick up any tiny bots that cried. He'd rock a little on his cart with the tiniest of them in his lap, just like he did with his very own child. And any a little bit bigger would sit on his knees as well, while he sat by the windows, and talked with them like they were smart little not-yet-adults who understood more than the world so quickly assumed, and like they clearly had an opinion and a say. A few he'd met that were bigger still, had loved to sit in adult sized chairs, their feet swinging a little just above the floor, while he sat on his cart in front of them so they could talk and back and forth like any two intelligent bots might do.

"I told you I was perfectly fine," Knockout muttered. And his hand went slowly to the hand control of the cart, just as though he thought he might get away with backing up toward the medbay doors. The old bot chuckled a little, shook his head, and promptly rested his hands on the cart's armrests to stop him before he even started to move.

"It's never unwise to check and be sure," he said seriously. "Blows to the chest panel can be serious business. And that bot was a lot bigger than you. I think you must know very well it could have been so much worse..."

"I know," Knockout answered slowly. And he nodded with genuine understanding, while he hand slowly moved away from his hand control. He looked the old bot in the optics and said seriously, "I'm grateful for you concern."

"Is Daddy... okay?" Cybershock asked, standing nervously beside Arcee – the two having stopped by with Knockout for a moment on their way to the preschool inside the youngling center. The youngling held her carrier's hand, but she stepped just as far forward as she possibly could while doing so, looking with worry over the badly scuffed dents on his body that she hadn't even appeared to notice before.

"He'll be just fine," Ratchet assured the little bot, smiling, and thankful once again that things weren't much worse.

"He might let you touch up his paint later," Arcee said, smiling at her family.

Knockout nodded slowly at that, smiling at his creation, who promptly grinned right back. And he laughed just a little under his intakes, over how entirely put off and panicked he would have been not so long ago, at the very thought of a youngling trying to paint him. But Cybershock was good at it. Her little hands were steady, and she loved to do it. She'd touched up the paint on her carrier too.

"Cybershock, come here," Knockout said then. And his optics looked over her little frame, while he shook his head just a little and laughed. When she let go of Arcee's hand and hurried over to him, he gestured at once with his optics and a waving hand, down to her knees and lower legs – badly scuffed , dull and faded from her endless climbing around, playing and sitting happily on her knees on the playground.

"You need some paint too, my girl," he said, thinking at once of the touch up paint cans made in her colors, sure enough kept handy in the family's home, right between the well matched colours for himself and his mate. And he saw his youngling cringe at once, with a look of disdain on her little face-plate.

"I don't like being painted," she declared at once, pouting with her hands loosely on her hip joints. "It's cold and it feels funny. I don't see how you can like that!" A second later though the youngling looked intent again, and serious. Her optics opened wider, blinking a couple of times, and she stepped ever closer, to grab one of his hands between hers. Slowly, with her voice shaky now with tears, she asked, "How could some bot want to beat on my creator? He didn't do anything to him!"

"Cybershock, some bots are just mean," Ratchet said. He came to kneel on the floor behind the little one, and gently tapped her on the shoulder, so that she would turn to look at him. "So many of the refugees are good bots, yes. But many are angry. Left bitter from the war that drove them from our planet. And they understand what they were taught to understand, just like anyone. They lash out. Attack what they fear. And they fear what they don't understand sometimes..."

"That all makes sense I guess," the little bot answered, with a sad heavy sigh.

But Cybershock would never fully understand and her creators both knew it. She would grasp the concept, commit to mind centuries of history... And with a loving spark as compassionate and good as hers, she would undoubtedly know so many of the parts she would never want to play should that history ever repeat itself. But she was a youngling of a new world. The Cybertron her family knew was far from the one she would know one day.

"How is the youngling doing?" Arcee asked, clearly wanting any update at all, just as much as her mate did.

"She had a terrible night, as you can probably imagine," Ratchet explained. And he sighed sadly, before he got to his feet again. For a long moment he just stood there, silent and shaking his head, sighing again sadly, before he finally went on speaking. "I took her to the special care room next to my own living space..." he gestured in the rough direction of the rooms he spoke of, and yet again he shook his head slowly. "She's by far the sickest bot in here, and will be for a while. She survived the night, and believe me, I was glad of that this morning. But it's still not entirely hopeful for this one. It amazes me a bot that small survived such damages at all. I've seen many full sized adult frames dead on the battlefield from the very same sort of mass injury. I've had her powered down all night just doing what I could in terms of emergency repairs... I let her try to wake up a bit this morning, and she did it too. But it's obvious to me how little she likes just being conscious at all. I'm considering exactly what I should do very carefully 'Bee has been sitting with her most of this morning. Another student of mine, a new one called Starsong has been no end of help too. He's been checking up on our little patient any chance he's had. That bot may be brand new to this, and barely a youngling himself at that. But he's certainly dedicated."

"It surprises me that I don't know that little bot," Arcee said. And her face-plate showed genuine dismay and confusion. "Cybershock has never played with her on the playground or anywhere little bots would usually be. She's never come to the preschool... I've called around a bit, and no one working anywhere in the younging centre seems to know her at all."

"I heard early this morning from Ultra Magnus," Ratchet answered "Naturally, he's been working on this incident all night. "The youngling is unregistered. Not only unregistered in the preschool, which of course is not a legal matter. But unregistered, period. She was born on a refugee ship, obviously. But her birth was never filed when it landed here. And legally she still doesn't exist. The youngling's name is Switchblade. 'Bee was able to get her to tell him that much during a very brief time she was talking early this morning... Her creator has also been arrested. The police have little to hold him on yet except that unprovoked attack on Knockout. But they are searching him home. The little one's injuries look to be an accident, but they have every reason to think there's something going on in that building."

"Switchblade?" Knockout cried in dismay over the name he'd heard a moment before. It was his turn now to shake his head. And did so for a good long moment, while he sat otherwise still on his cart. "That's a terrible name." He held up a hand before he went on, thoughtfully. "Granted, we can hardly say much better of my name obviously. Though as a youngling, my name was taken at least in general, as more funny than anything. But Switchblade? For a neutral, and a little femmeling no less? Surely it crosses the line. That's just so... violent."

"Well we all know how violent and angry her creator is," Arcee muttered under her intakes.

Ratchet opened his mouth then, meaning to add a reply of his own. But he paused a second, and his hand went to his commlink. For a second he mumbled into it, while he paced a moment, obviously on the comm with someone who did most of the talking while he did most of the listening. Finally, he cut the commlink again, and turned to his teammates with a look of shock and dread clear on his face-plate.

"That comm-call was from Firestorm," he explained, shaking his head back and forth in clear disbelief and denial. "She just found Soundwave missing this morning. It looks like he fled from the base sometime last night."


	7. Chapter 7

Soundwave had been in the air for quite awhile by now. And he understood just how long he'd flown without a single stop, when the first hints of sunrise showed over the mountains far to the east. He never have been the strongest among Cybertronian flyers, certainly not close to the fastest of them, or the most manoeuvrable. But still he enjoyed flying as much as any flyer. And he possesed decent long range endurance, even if he was pushing it now. Soundwave knew he could well have simply thrown out a ground bridge and flown right through, reaching the place he was going in minutes, instead of many hours. But it had seemed the wrong thing to do when he'd started out. He'd wanted the quiet of night, and he'd wanted to fly. Besides, he knew well that without a ground bridge, tracking him would be so much harder if any Auotbot was so inclined to try.

He'd wanted to think too – at least he thought he had. But memories, most of which he'd run from for years - filling his days and nights with work and data codes, statistics and figures – stuffing his processor with endless information, analyzing and memorizing anything and everything – invaded his at first idle thoughts, just as soon as he'd dared to think them. And he'd flown for hours, his mind filled with thoughts of his carrier – the promise she made once to fly away with him to safety, somewhere his creator would never find them ever again. He thought for a while that he should hate her, had she lived. He should hate her for failing him when she was all he had to trust and rely on. He should hate her for off-lining – for being careless and daring enough to get herself killed, by the very bot he'd always warned her might just kill her if she kept on provoking his rage. But he didn't hate her. He couldn't. And he knew he did not truly want to.

His mind flashed for a while to life in the fighting pits of Kaon. And he'd forced the memories away the very best he could, by firing his engines and flying just as fast as he could for a while in short bursts of added speed, while he spun in the air – such ridiculous aerial stunts fully meant only to pull his focus to precise and careful flying and away from the past. But that didn't work for long. It wasn't nearly enough, and he always went right back again.

His first defeat. The mocking laughter of the spectator crowd. Five hundred bots chanting things he only knew were clearly valuer and disgusting, but he barely understood. He wondered then if they knew then he was still barely a youngling who had barely lived to know the things they yelled about. He remembered his first victory – not so long after his defeat, because he'd tried so hard while fearing a repeat of the mocking laughter. His opponent was alive – Soundwave would certainly not ever tried to kill him back then. But he certainly was injured, and Soundwave realized slowly the energon that covered the front of his own chest plate, had sprayed over him from the partly detached leg of the bot he'd beaten to finally please the sadistic crowd.

He recalled too clearly, the bot that had eventually destroyed his optics and his faceplate in the arena - A big green brute that called himself 'Scrapheap.' And the name may certainly have seemed derogatory and less than desirable to most sane and civil bots, but he always had seemed pleased and proud of it somehow. He was just the sort of loud mouth, arrogant bragger that drove Soundwave to near madness day after day in the dormitories with his endless talk about little or nothing. And Soundwave was certainly it was his finally daring to speak up when he so rarely did – to tell the bragging brute while drunk on high grade, to kindly close his mouth, that had somehow made Scrapheap hate him as much as he did.

It was just after sunrise, when Soundwave transformed low in the air, and dropped easily to the ground. It was smooth and shiny here. And the sun reflected off the landscape of polished crystal, more than bright enough to make his optics burn. Soundwave shuddered at the stinging discomfort, somewhere inside his optics, because while it may not have been nearly as bad, it reminded him completely of a time so long ago now, that he felt like the pain would never stop. And he stood a moment, frozen with his fear, making himself understand that it really was only sunlight now that burned his optics, and even then because of the bright reflection.

His face-shield was off. It had felt so strange to fly without it – or stand thinking, or do anything for that matter. But he'd been so determined anyway to try. Promptly though, and mostly because of the sun and light reflections, he retrieved it from his storage compartment and put it back on quickly. He'd need it anyway – he needed his screens in his bot mode. Quickly he double checked his maps, half expecting that the place he'd landed had surely been wrong. But the map confirmed he was indeed right in his navigation.

Soundwave looked around him again, confused now. Because the place he'd been led to as a place of meeting, seemed to contain no place at all to meet with anyone. Not to mention there was no one there to meet with at all, despite the string of increasingly urgent and impatient messages.

'Run away,' a voice encouraged, strong inside his head. It sounded a bit like Firestorm's voice, though he knew it come only from himself. 'Fly right back to me. To the Autobots and to New Cybertron. This is not you anymore. It doesn't need to be..."

He considered obeying the voice for a moment. And he wanted to more than anything. He recalled the warmth of her small arms around him, her little hands holding his every time he woke up screaming at nothing at all in the middle of the night. He could see her smile – the image of it was forever stored in his processor. And he shook that image off at once he didn't want to think of her because he didn't want to miss her, which he did already in the short time he'd been flying. And centuries of discipline were just as strong as love, if not stronger still So he just stood there, frozen in place on the crystal ground, angry and sad, helpless, elated, curious and horrified all at once.

The ground slid open then, with only a sudden grinding underfoot to warn him of it at all. He was standing in the worst place he could possibly have stood. And he would have fallen into the hold that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, had he not thought fast enough to drop to his knees adn grab for a still stable edge of the sharp crystal around him. When the shifting stopped, he dared to let go, because it seemed to him he was clearly supposed to. The drop was short, barely further than the height of his body. And he hit lightly, his feet making a light metallic tap as he did.

He was in some sort of crystal cave, shaking a little now from his memories. And for a flash of a second, he dared to gasp silently in wonder at the sheer beauty of the place. His immediate thought was that Firestorm would love it. And he was sad in an instant just to think of her again.

"Soundwave!" a too familiar voice boomed behind him, right along with the noise of huge heavy footsteps on the rigid amythist floor, And Soundwave turned around, slowly to face a large imposing silver form that stood behind him. "You never were usually one to keep me waiting. How kind of you to finally make an appearance."

"Lord Megatron," Soundwave answered slowly - too slowly, he understood at once. He spoke thouhg his vocalizer modulator now for the first time in a couple of years. And the sound of his own voice, so unnatural and warped by technology almost frightened him just a little, making him force back an inward shudder before he continued. "Please, forgive my delay."

* * *

The condition of the tiny damaged youngling bot was worsening rapidly as she day wore on. Ratchet had known right from the start - given centuries of his own tragic experiences in such things – that could only be the case. Still, for all of his knowledge – his cautious exception – it was certainly no easier on him to see it all happen.

Her systems ran so hot. That was clear from a fast glance at the monitor behind her. Her metal had been close to super-heated for a time by the heat of whatever it was that had done her the damage she suffered to begin with. Her repair system was down, taken almost entirely offline, by the extreme heat and most of all, by system shock. And that system shock, he was still failing badly to bring her out of.

She was still being cooled slowly, wrapped constantly in dampened coverings, because to cool her frame any faster would have risked warping or even cracking her metal. But the process was too slow for the intake pump, whose seals Ratchet suspected had weakened from her internal temperature. And sometime not long after the sun had come up, he'd suspected they'd begun to leak. Her intakes rattled and whirred horribly. And every now and then would squeak and squeal, as she tried harder and harder to take in enough good air though the faulting pump. And the work it took just to intake - combined with the stress of horrible ongoing pain - had caused her spark to race from the stress of it.

The body armour that had covered her damaged arm and shoulder panel, had been taken off as planned because it was useless to keep it. There was no hope of saving it - and was doing far more harm than any real good. A devastatingly large section of her upper chest panel had been removed too, because it fared little better. But without a repair system, the damage underneath all of that - which over the most part reached clean to the inner frame structure – had little hope of even starting to fix itself. Repairs were badly needed. Massive repair work that would most likely mean replacement of the entire arm eventually. But she never had been stable enough to even consider repair work yet, and her downward turn had made any thought there may have been about it disappear entirely.

Ratchet stood, at present close to the tiny bot, busy wrapping medical grade cloth, soaked in refined energon tightly around her damaged arm and shoulder panel – a last ditch idea he could only hope, in his desperation might do her some good. And it was so obvious to him that he was causing her pain in doing that – and she was somewhat awake, alert and aware – optics blinking a little now and then. But in her weakness, she barely struggled, and made hardly a sound, while the old bot worked.

Knockout sat near her, on the other side of the recharge station she lay helplessly on, still kept bundled at least partly in the metallic transport blanket, strapped into it securely, with the the cooling rags in place underneath that, and the wires from monitors, pulled carefully through the places where the clips connected. And he read to her from a data pad he held in his hands - a children's story from planet Earth, and something she could not possibly understand enough to truly follow the story line, even were she stronger. But she listened intently to him anyway, her head turned a little on the partly folded top of the silvery blanket, so she could look at him, with those half closed and fading, slowly blinking optics of hers, while he read. She even smiled a little, the corners of her mouth turning up just a tiny bit, when he spoke in the highest pitch he possibly could, to read the lines of one certain character. She smiled again when he read the next line, a new character, in a far lower one to indicate the character was someone very big.

Bumblebee stood next to Ratchet, handing him supplies as he asked for them. And he turned slowly, a serious look on his faceplate, when Arcee crept carefully into the small room.

"We almost took her out of that transport wrap last night," he explained, gesturing with a hand to the youngling in the metallic cover. "But it seems to be keeping her calm just being all packed up like that."

"She's our little bot in a bag for now then." Arcee whispered back, smiling just a little.

"Hey," she said gently to the little bot, just as soon as her bondmate paused in the middle of the story he'd been reading in order to let her She reached out just a second, meaning to gently touch her. But any part she might safely have touched was still bundled in the metallic blanket, secured with straps and fasteners. "Remember me?"

The youngling bot barely seemed to notice her at first. Finally though after a moment, she blinked a little, optics slightly more alert. And slowly she nodded her head the tiniest bit in answer. A second later she gave a little whine of pain, and tears filled her optics.

"I promised I'd come see you for a bit, didn't I?" Arcee reminded the little bot. And she smiled brightly, just hoping to see the tiny youngling smile back. She did the slightest bit, before she whined again, more pained tears showed in her optics. She whined and sniffled a little, blinking a second before a few escaped, sliding down her face-plate.

"It's alright, little bot," Knockout said slowly, speaking to the youngling, and again showing his once surprising patience when it came to the little ones. "I know you can't help it. Cry a little if you need to. Would you like me to keep reading?"

"Still another ongoing complication with this one," Ratchet murmured quietly. He continued on with his work. He really had little option but to go on, even considering the tiny bot's clear discomfort and growing distress, because any chance it may just do her some good was better than nothing by then. "I can't seem to keep her pain medicine quite high enough to keep her fully comfortable, without her sparkrate raising even higher than it is now." He shook his head, defeated. "It's such a tricky thing with bots this young. Their little bodies just can't process the compounds like we can."

"You're being so brave," said, still speaking gently to the tiny bot, and so clearly trying hard just to encourage her a little. And just as clearly it worked, because the youngling smiled just a little once again, through tears that streamed down her face-plate.

Ratchet, still busy working, nodded briefly in his teammate's direction. Because really it was true. The tiny bot certainly did cry – given just how young she was, it would have been utterly shocking and even alarming if she didn't. But it was not half as much as anyone might have expected. All day since coming out of power down she'd sniffle a little here and there, and she'd certainly whimper and whine. And every so often, when her constant pain got to be too much to put up with, or she simply got too scared, tears would stream down her face-plate for a while. But she'd always stop again, as soon as she could manage, and that would be that.

"Wanna... hear... rest..." the youngling said slowly, still crying Her voice was so quiet it was barely heard at all, and it shook with her tears. But she looked up, her expression hopeful, communicating with her optics far more than she could with her words.

"Okay," Knockout nodded, smiling. He looked again at the data pad, still in his hands, looking for the place he had left off before he slowly continued on reading.

Arcee crept back around to the other side of the room again, where she stood close to Ratchet's left side a moment, silently. Finally, moving slowly so was not to startle him while he worked, she rested a hand gently on his shoulder panel to hold just a small part of his attention.

"She's sure giving this a good try," she said in a whispered tone, trying hard to give him hope when she knew at once how he feared he'd lose this tiny patient. "She's still trying so hard to laugh and smile. This little bot isn't giving up just yet." Arcee glanced up at a clock, mounted across the room, her her optics went right back to the tiny bot again. "She's survived more than halfway through a full day now."

"I had that old CR chamber moved in here a while ago," Ratchet said quietly. He gestured once with his optics in the direction of the strange machine in the furthest corner, behind the place where Knockout sat, and plugged in to a power outlet, at the end now of a long complex power up sequence. "'Bee suggested we put the little one in there." The old bot shook his head just slightly, considering. He reached a hand out to his young student still standing on his other side, and he took the next long strip of wet cloth from him carefully. "The idea isn't terrible. You know well we've seen it do some good for bots in worse condition than her. It might be worth a try if we have to... but I'm far from crazy about the idea."

"Ratchet, if you think it might work..." Arcee began. But the old medic interrupted her gently with a quick wave of a hand before he went right back to his work. He shook his head again, with doubt and uncertainly clear on his face-plate.

"This was technology invented well into the war, built to repair critically damaged soldiers found close to dying on the battle field. There were few, if any, youngling bots left on Cybertron by then," he explained, still doubtful. "I highly doubt the effects of CR chambers on bots this young have ever been tested."

The tiny bot's intakes squealed louder than before, and there was no doubt left that her intake pump was leaking. Ratchet shook his head staring at the readings on the monitor. He could easily repair the pump. Replace it entirely if he needed to do that instead. But the tiny bot was far too sick to survive such a job, or even a power down by now. Her spark raced a moment more, before it's pulse rate dropped to less than half of normal, only to sudden pick up again, racing as ever. Ratchet, having done just as much as he possibly could then, gently shifted the tiny destroyed arm, so that it was back inside the metallic cover again. The weak tiny bot, gave steady nearly silent whimpers for a moment, wet optics staring helplessly at Knockout while he just kept on reading. But her tiny cries stopped just as soon as she was tightly wrapped back in the cover again.

The youngling's intakes all but stopped then, and after several seconds in which she had not cycled any air at all, a monitor alarm began to chime and shriek. Knockout, still close beside her, stopped his reading abruptly and dropped the data pad to the floor. Acting quickly and thinking even faster, he reached forward just as far as he could on his cart, placing his hands under the back of the little bot's upper frame, lifting her covers and all up into a slightly inclined position. Jarred by the motion and stirred a little from the pressure now placed on her fast failing intake pump, air left her mouth in a fast little gasp, before she quickly took in more. He turned the top section of the recharge station up a little after that, and set her back down, because at least for the moment that was working.

"We've got to do something," Arcee said then, and she knew full well that was of course little more than a statement of the obvious. But this youngling still made her think of her own child, and that made her panic where she should have been calmer.

Ratchet had moved quickly to stand in front of the CR chamber checking and rechecking systems, because he saw little chance aside from it now. But still, with the door propped wide open at front and his head partway in so he could double check the fluid levels at close the the floor the thing, he shook his head yet again.

"I'm still not sure I like this much," he mumbled. He stood upright again and turned a little, expressing the things he feared most. "She might just start to panic over this. And It could be a lot. Any bad panic now, with her intakes fragged to anything, and her spark so close to giving out, and we have a chance she may just stop intaking or go right into full on spark failure. I'm about to medicate her as much as I safely can, and she will naturally drop into slow power down as soon as she's inside. But still... I wouldn't do something so utterly reckless... and it certainly is... if I thought we had another viable option left."

"Let me try..." Knockout murmured, thinking hard. And he appeared to consider his own thoughts carefully. "Do you think... Let me hold her a moment."

"That's just a very bad..." Ratchet muttered, surprised at once by the strange suggestion from his teammate. He was going to tell him quickly and in no uncertainly terms, that that was just a very bad idea indeed. The tiny youngling, he reasoned quickly, was far too sick, in far too much pain and discomfort to be moved without absolute reason for it, let alone held on his lap while he sat on his cart.

The old bot however, considered again, just as a second after he'd begun. The younglng bot may have been damaged, and her state certainly was horrific and devastating. But she needed comfort and compassion as much as any tiny bot. She needed understanding, and Knockout had so clearly become, so quickly, the bot she related to and trusted most of any one of the medical team – probably thanks mostly to his unexpected affinity for youngling patients.

Being well bundled into the metallic blanket with the straps fastened firmly around her, made her much easier to move than she might have been otherwise. And Ratchet slowly picked her up from the recharge station, supporting her body with both of his arms and careful of anything too terribly damaged on her frame. The alarming warmth of her body was noticeable to the touch even through the heavy covering. And she whined just a little as soon as she was moved. But her optics were closed and stayed that way. And she made not even a try at the smallest of movements.

"Hey," Knockout said, speaking now to the youngling, and doing so gently, just as soon as Ratchet had placed her laying on his lap with her head just slightly upright against his armrest. "Can you look at me for a second, little bot?" The youngling's optics slowly opened, blinking. And he held her lightly, supporting her body a little, like he would with a bot so much younger than she was, when her optics showed panic for a brief second.

Her visuals were clearly unfocused, but she stared at him anyway, so obviously trying her best, because she trusted him. Working as well as he could with one hand still not perfectly functional, he began undoing the snaps and clips of the metallic blanket she'd thus far stayed bundled in. She gave the faintest of whimpers then, in distress at losing that comfort. Because 'Bee had been right about that keeping her as calm as she was. He pulled the covering away from her upper frame a bit, and she whimpered just a little louder, as much as she clearly could. And it was so sadly obvious then that she feared more pain, because recent experience told her to.

"Hey. It's okay, little bot," Knockout said. He gently picked up her undamaged hand, and shifted a little on his cart, so that he could hold it firmly in his – a way to hold her focus just a little more "You think you can talk a little bit?"

The youngling's mouth opened just the tiniest bit, and her intake hissed a little, as she tried to make her vocalier work. For all of her trying, it looked like she would fail, that she was just too far gone to make even a purposeful sound. But she tried again, because Arcee had been right – the tiny bot wasn't giving up just yet. And slowly, after a struggling intake, pulled in though her failing intake pump, she barely mumbled "Umm-ha."

"I have a question for you," Knockout said, speaking just as he so strangely did with all his youngling patients - that strangely near adult to adult, mature kind of speech that they all so oddly appeared to respond to with such positive promise. "An important one. Do you know we aren't ever trying to hurt you?"

"Yes" The youngling's voice was so very small. But she'd managed an actual word. Her badly destroyed frame had never stopped hurting. And just like so many times that day, coolant tears began to spill again from her optics when she'd simply had too much.

"You're okay," Knockout said gently. "Go ahead and cry if you need to. Remember?"

Coolant tears streamed down the tiny bot's face-plate then. And for a good long moment she just lay, still as ever, in Knockout's lap, crying silently because she couldn't help it and this time it was just a little worse than before. Ratchet stared for a second toward the clock across the room. And he tried, in his head, to think, making his calculations down to the minute. He knew when he'd last given her as much pain medication as he safely could have done. And it had been just a bit too long ago he realized. Despair threatened to overcome him quickly as he realized he'd dropped the ball on that, even if only just a little. Even if he certainly hadn't meant to.

"Plea... please... no more pain. Hurt... hurts... no... nooo..." the tiny bot said, her voice mostly mumbling badly, when Ratchet gently shifted her around just a little bit in order to inject painkillers meant to help her. She'd began to panic again, and surely her mumbling would have have been screams if she'd only been strong enough. It had been not yet a full day since the tiny youngling bot had been so badly injured. And already she'd woken from a power-down - and the near panic attack hat had come with that process - to find a fair bit of armor gone from her frame. She'd been hooked up to monitors and energon lines - one of which had needed redoing when she;d pulled it free in an eariler panic, and been subjected to multiple changes of the tight metallic bandages that covered her damaged body - while sticking in places horribly enough to cause her to cry loudly with pain. And all day, given just how young she was, she really had been good all things considered. But finally, it seemed now like she truly close to the most she could take before completely breaking down.

"You're alright, you're alright," Knockout said to her slowly, patiently. He held her against him just slightly again, while her undamaged hand clung tightly to his until she'd calmed down again.

"I... am..." the tiny bot said a moment later. Her tears had stopped again And she blinked her optics once and then twice, trying so hard just to speak out loud. "I am... off-lining."

Her words were not a question. That was clear from her tone. And the comment she'd made was one of an observant and well aware youngling simply stating a fact.

"Yes, you are," Knockout answered, telling her the brutal and honest truth when many might have tried to lie. She just lay, still as ever, blinking a little, while she tried to take in it, to wrap her head around what that really meant, and he held her hand just a little tighter to hold her attention again.

"There's so little more we can do," he said, still speaking to her like a bot who so obviously understood every word he said. "But there is one more thing we want to try. And we think it's going to work. Can you trust us?"

"Yeah..."

"We are going to put you in a..." Knockout paused there, and he shook his head just slightly. Clearly he was trying hard just to choose the best way in which to explain the complex workings of the CR chamber to a small youngling, who knew nothing of such things in the slightest and had no frame of reference. Finally he gave a small smile again, and said decisively, "well, how about I show you?"

The tiny bot smiled just a little. And her youngling curiosity showed itself in her optics, despite her weakened and terrible state. Ratchet, both still doubtful and dismayed, Backed away from the chamber to stand far back out the way. And as soon as he did, Knockout carefully moved himself turning around, his hand letting go of the little bot's so that he could park in front of it's open door.

"See," he said slowly. "It's like a... like a big cabinet. A bot sized storage cupboard! Of course it's big bot sized. So a little big for you... we'll make it work."

Knockout turned his head a little then, looking around the room for his bondmate, who still stood closer to the door, with 'Bee. He indicated exactly what he needed from her with hand and finger gestures so vague he might have meant anything. But Arcee knew him better than any bot did. And after only a second in which she stared at him, obviously as baffled as anyone, she grabbed a little basin from a worktable behind her and hurried toward him with it. After more silent gestures – which of course he made instead of simply talking, so as not to bother or scare the tiny bot on his lap – she bent down to reach into CR chamber with it.

"See...," Knockout continued, still patiently. The youngling's intakes began to sputter and rattle again and this time still worse. The montiors showed her spark began to rapidly move between racing and slowing again And he shifted her carefully, gently as he could, assuring her head was raised higher. She gasped for an intake, and then another before it all evened out. And promptly she began to whimper and cry lightly from the motion and the pain it had caused her. "The tank here... the bot sized storage cupboard, the bottom of it is filled with... a special kind of cleaning fluid.

Arcee, again understanding his intentions in only a second held the basin in front of the tiny bot, and well in her reach. And she moved, reaching with her fingers just enough to dip them into the fluid that now filled the basin. She gave a good smile then, the biggest she'd managed yet, so clearly amused by the heavy strange liquid substance that no bot could ever quite manage to fully describe the feeling of exactly.

Knockout shifted her just slightly in his lap again so that he could work. And carefully, working just as well as he could at such a task, with one hand still not perfect, he began unfastening the metallic covering entirely. She whimpered just a little louder in protest, because she really was far more comfortable all bundled up so well. He pulled the cover away from her frame, and she cried a bit in fear, because once again, to her, it could only mean inevitable pain. But Knockout just continued on, and though her little coolant tears she just stared it him, still trusting. He reached around for a clean rag and dipped it into the basin, before he gently used that to rub the fluid onto a part of her body that was damaged but hardly the worst of it.

The younglng cried a second, louder than she'd managed to in hours. But it seemed in seconds that it was only fear and horrible expectation that had make her cry like that. Because in only a second more, she settled again, with surprise clear on her little face-plate. Knockout repeated the whole thing again, daring this time to try it on damage that was even worse. And this time she simply let him, because there was little pain involved at all.

"Good little bot," Knockout said to her. He gently pulled the wrappings away from her destroyed arm, and cringed sadly when he caused her more tears in doing that. "Good little bot. Trust me on this okay." He dripped some fluid then, a good amount this time, over the mangled wires and charred metal that had once been her tiny green hand. And the youngling, amazingly appeared only to lay calmer on his lap, instead of any fighting at all.

"Ratchet is going to put you right into that stuff," Knockout said slowly. "It'll do even more good then. What do you think?"

"Mmm-ha..." came a quiet reply. The youngling looked so nervous, but still she stayed calm.

"For a moment, it'll feel just like it does now..." he kept right on dripping CR fluid steadily onto parts of her tiny body. "Warm. Kind of... weird. It should hardly hurt at all. You'll go into recharge pretty fast, and you'll sleep a while. When you are recharging we will close the door, but there is no way to ever lock you in. And of course it's okay to be a bit scared at first..."

"I... want to..." the youngling said, and her optics closed then both in trust and in lack of ability not to as she grew still weaker.

Ratchet, shaking his head now, not from annoyance but simply amazement, stepped across the room again and gently lifted the tiny bot from his teammate's knees. He took another long step forward, and just as gently, he placed her inside the tank. Her body settled at once into the CR fluid,which covered her over almost entirely, and he shifted her position a little, so her arms stayed beneath it and her feet turned a little to one side comfortably. The whole time she gave not a single cry, and even sighed a little, almost perfectly content in there as she smiled just the slightest bit, before her processor powered down.

* * *

"I guess I've just gotta keep believing it's possible," Smokescreen mused. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, and took a drink from his container. "Love is all around now. Surely there's still a bot out there for me somewhere..."

"Well, this hole in the wall is sure not the best place to even think of looking," Bulkhead warned laughing a little.

Smokescreen nodded with hesitant understanding. And he looked around, dismayed, at the inside of the 'Chrome Hubcab. He nodded again, more agreeable now, when he caught sight of a large blue bot, purging his tanks next to the door. And when his optics fell on another bot, a small white and red one, shamelessly groping a much larger fellow who so clearly didn't seem to mind being groped at all like that in public, his nodding turned to cringing.

"This was a decent place when it first opened," he observed in dismay. And he spoke just a ittle louder than before in order to be heard over the sound of yelling nearby – loud threats from the clearly jealous bond-mate of the big bot being groped by the little fellow. Somewhere, on the other side of the large bar, another bot purged all over the floor, while a another ran for the wash station, and instead stumbled drunkenly against a wall.

"This is..." Smokescreen mumbled, still on high alert as a well trained soldier despite sime high grade in his system. He gestured toward the table close by, where the jealous bot was now waving his fists around and shouting at the smaller one who yelled just as loudly. "This is not going to end well."

"This place ain't so bad," Wheeljack said. And so obviously far more intoxicated then his friends were, he laughed loudly for a good moment, before he suddenly learned sideways on is chair, nearly falling off in the process, to smack Smokescreen hard across the back panel. "You shoulda seen da places we hung out in back in the old wrecker days!"

"Yeah" Bulk muttered beside him. And he shook his head hard, before he finished his own drink. "Back in the days before three drinks'd have you nearly falling over!"

"So, what about you, Bulk'?" Smokescreen asked, curious and making decent conversation. "Have you been looking for your special bot?" If Bulkhead had been looking, like so many bots were, he had certainly never bothered to talk about it, even to his friends.

"Nah, not really." Bulkhead shrugged as he answered, but hen he appeared to think a second and finally he continued on. "Well, I am, I guess. I mean if it happens, it happens, right? But looking for love, actively seeking it? Nah."

"It's been a bit tough since the war ended," Bulkhead admitted then. He set his now empty drink container down on the table in front of him. But quickly he shook his head at the nearby server, who looked in is direction, and silently inquired with her optics if he needed another. "It's like... yeah, most bots are looking for love now. Makes sense. Everyone wants to mate eventually and now's the time, yeah. But... I think I want something ever more than that." He shook his head then and looked a moment down at the stained floor. "Yeah. It's stupid. Makes no sense."

"Bulk'" Wheeljack exclaimed laughing again at next to nothing. "When did you become so fraggin' con-ta-late-ive?" The word he obvious meant to use was 'contemplative.' But in his drunkenness he simply couldn't get his vocalizer around such a word. Smokescreen only shook his head.

"I dunno," Bulkhead said, shrugging. And he smiled slightly. "I guess I have more time to think now."

"Now there's a bot for you, Smoky," Wheeljack interupted. He stood up from his chair in order to point a little too excitedly across the barroom. And lost his balance at once, stumbling backward and back into the chair before he would have otherwise hit the floor.

In almost the very same second, now familiar small bot flew across the table, thrown there by the bigger bot he'd been forced to fight with by getting too friendly with his mate. All three Autobots sitting there were about to jump up from their seats, but the fight took itself just as quickly to the other side of their table. And the watched the small red and white groper as he yelled in the face of a much bigger and angry bot, finally daring to shove his hands against the big fellow's chest panel in aggression- his state so clearly far too altered to know he didn't stand a chance. Slowly they moved toward the doors.

"Assuming a'course ya like minibots..." Wheeljack said slurring his words a little, and continuing right on his line of thinking just as thouhg he had never been interrupted by the fight. Smokescreen, confused by too much going on all at once, and never sure in the first place exactly where his drunk teammate had meant to have been pointing, only blinked his optics at him a moment in despair. His hand gestured at once toward the doors of the establishment, where the pair of bots now fought loudly right outside.

"Are you kidding," he exclaimed, shaking his head. "That little minibot out there is about to get his alf kicked and good because he's obviously an overconfident creep!"

"Nuh-uh," Wheeljack answered, laughing yet again and shaking his head. "Not that minibot, Smoky." The white wrecker cringed visible, before he laughed again. And this time he did a better job of pointing, and right toward the bar. "That one!"

Smokescreen turned toward the bar, his optics landing at once on a familiar white and yellow paintjob.

Are you fragging kidding me?" He questioned. And shaking his head he leaned over the table to talk to his teammate in hushed tones. "Firestorm? You seriously think I'm going to actually...?"

"Ya gotta admit, she's pretty cute," Wheeljack answered. And he wasn't doing as good a job of keeping his own voice down. "Not to mention smart. Just as stubborn as you. And proud to be Cybertronian."

"And she's practically Soundwave's bondmate," Smokescreen said firmly, cringing at little in fear at the very thought of a fate that may just await any bot who dared one wrong move where she was concerned. Besides, he'd never thought of her in the way his teammate implied now. And he knew he'd find it just a bit too disconcerting, if the bot had not been more than slightly drunk.

"They'll never last," Wheeljack said, his intoxicated state so clearly bringing out a kind of cynicism in him. "Sweet little bot like her, trying to make it with former third in command of the 'cons. Soundwave is still just plain scary. Besides, I've never heard him say much. And he might just have gone off the rails now anyways. Everyone knows by now, he took off last night and I guess he's still not back."

"Soundwave talks to Firestorm," Smokescreen said. And he left it at that, because he never had enjoyed gossip and speculation when it come to the hows and whys of who loved who.

"I don't wanna think yet about why Soundwave took off though," he admitted seconds later. And he polished off his drink quickly, between his words. "I can't stand to think something bad is really going on. That he'd betray us now..."

"He wouldn't," Bulkhead said with confidence. And Smokescreen remembered that Bulk' and Soundwave had by then become at least something close to friends. He shook his head a little then, only hoping his teammate was right.

"Let's call her over," Smokescreen suggested after a moment. And without even waiting for the agreement of the others, he stood up from his chair to do exactly that.

Firestorm, still standing close to the bar alone, turned slowly to walk toward them, her face-plate showing that she had only then realized they were in there at all. She still pushed her walking frame in front of her,while Laserbeak, rode oddly enough, on the front of the handlebars. But she barely seemed to lean on it anymore, using it instead only as a safety measure in case she happened to stumble in walking too fast. And hesitantly she parked it beside a chair at the Autobots' table and sat herself down slowly.

"Firestorm, what are you doing here?" Bulkhead questioned. And the others nodded a little at his question, because it really was clearly the one they had all wanted to ask her.

"I... I just wanted to get away from the base for a while," the little white and yellow bot answered slowly. And she sighed as she did. Every hint of her usual bright smile was gone from her face-plate, replaced instead by anxiety and spark break. The strange little bird looked oddly agitated too, and it didn't take an expert on... whatever sort of bot she actually was... to know at once that she was wasn't happy. "I talked with the police bots, and then I went back home to my room. But I couldn't sit around and think anymore."

"Soundwave left Laserbeak?" Smokescreen observed slowly. He hadn't realized that before, and he wondered if anyone else had. It could have been a good sign or it could have been a terrible one. He wasn't sure he wanted to know exactly which just yet.

"She was with me in Soundwave's room this morning when I woke up from recharge," Firestorm explained, still speaking slowly. And tears formed at the corners of her optics, before she quickly wiped them away roughly with the back of her hand. "I woke up to find her perching on the edge of his recharge station, right above a data pad he'd left for me." the tears came back and she pawed at them again in obvious frustration. But the battle was lost, and tears quickly fell down her face-plate. "He'd wrote that he was sorry. That he'd be back as soon as he could. That was it. I... I didn't give the pad to the patrol bots. It's none of their business really and it prob'ly means nothing to them anyway. I dunno why he'd ever leave Laserbeak though. I never thought he'd ever leave her behind."

"What are you gonna do?" Bulkhead questioned, his tone compassionate, understanding. And Firestrom shrugged just a little, so clearly helpless. She held out an arm, just like everyone had seen Soundwave do so many times. And the little bird-bot hopped right on at once.

"Not much I can do. She's mine to care for now, until Soundwave comes back. And I still refuse to think he won't, because he would never leave her forever, even if he did me. Laserbeak is smart, not much trouble. She knows how to function on her own. You know as well as anyone, she's so much more than just some mindless animal. I just wish I could talk with her like Soundwave can. I can't hear her voice in my head like he..."

"What about yourself?" Bulk' asked. And that was clearly what he'd meant in the first place. He looked her in the optics intently. "You gonna be alright?"

"Yeah," Firestorm said, still slowly. And she looked up then, confidence just barely starting to show on her face-plate. "I know he's coming back to us. I... I just wish I knew if its going to be hours, or a month.."

Smokesceen looked beside him then to exchange fast looks with Wheeljack. And on the white wrecker's faceplate, he saw sudden understanding, mixed with his regret. It was clear then that he understood love where he'd doubted it only moments before.

"There was an explosion last night, inside that electronics shop downtown that's never open," Firestorm said, after she'd been silent for a while just staring at the floor. And all three Autobots nodded, because of course everybody knew about that by then. "A little youngling was involved, and she was nearly killed." Again, the Autobots nodded, sadly. "Soundwave may done bad things. He's never tried to tell he he hasn't. But he never liked it. Never took any joy from hurting anyone. And he'd never hurt a youngling..."

They'd all been informed of just as much as the police bots already knew, because of course, the Autobots were doing their best to help with the investigation. The shop, it seemed had been a front, though that had been suspected for a while now. The place had a windowless basement, reinforced and hidden from the city, and that was all that have prevented the entire shop from blowing off it's foundation along with half a downtown block when a fire had started in an unregistered chemical lab, and setting off half a basement full of illegal explosives stashed away inside.

"Ratchet says the little bot's a little better now," Bulk' said. "He's more confidant now... says she might just be okay..."

"The patrol bots are trying to blame Soundwave for a part in the explosion," Fierestorm explained. And again tears showed in her optics. Laserbeak looked up then from her place perched on the little bot's arm. And she made the strangest sad whirring sound when she did. "They say that younglings creator, who also owns the shop, was obvious responsible for accident. But still, they wonder who he worked for... they say somebot was probably about to start building bombs, given what they found down there. The patrol says it had to be someone smart enough to do it. Someone who knew how to hate enough. And when Soundwave disappeared the very same night..."

"They told us the same thing," Smokescreen admitted, reluctant to do so, but decided he should only because the topic was now already on the table.

"The patrol bots won't do much without the okay from Ultra Magnus," Bulkhead said thoughtfully. "And he's not convinced there's really a connection at all. Those patrolers are all just neutrals from returned ships. They never saw Soundwave in action. They didn't fight against him in battle or get to know how he works, and they've gotten him all wrong. Ultra Magnus is an Autobot. He knows as well as we do that Soundwave's thing was espionage and hacking... certainly not explosives."

"Soundwave probably could build a bomb, sure," Smokescreen said honestly. "But that doesn't mean he ever would. Besides, that wasn't the first time something blew up. Remember the power generator downtown?" he looked at his teammates then, meaning to get across a point he knew they already understood themselves regardless. "He and Firestorm were both victims then."

* * *

"You were never supposed to have actually been good, you know," Ratchet remarked with a chuckle of laughter obvious behind his serious tone. He was in the midst of digging around inside a cabinet, and he didn't even bother to turn around, while he talked so casually.

And Knockout - sitting in a chair against the far wall of the medbay, his focus intent on the leg exercises he was doing, working with a tension band looped around his left foot, and held in his hands – looked at the back of the old bot's head across the room for a second, baffled.

"I... I'm sorry...?"

"I never got to know you well as a fellow medic in the time between your defection and your unfortunate illness," Ratchet explained. He found what he'd been looking for – a small little tool kit he didn't seem to use much, and quickly he crossed the medbay, carrying it. "I knew you were running the show here while I worked back on Earth. And I can't say I ever had high hopes in that. Rebellious young know it all, learned half of all you knew among Decepticons... just as interested in street racing and the perfect finish and paint than in any actual work and study." the old bot stopped beside a worktable, set down the kit, and stood shaking his head in obvious bewilderment for a second, before he went on. "I thought it would be the end of your career once your processor failed. I wrongly thought at first you'd hardly care. To watch your work today with that youngling patient of ours..." he paused a second, and his optics finally met Knockout's. Again he shook his head. But of course he was smiling as he did it. "You were never supposed to be so good at this. At least not in the stubborn processor of this crabby old bot!"

"Crabby old bot...," Knockout sat chuckling at that a moment. He paused in his exercise long enough to give one small shrug, before he went right back to it again. The chuckle quickly became a laugh then and he said pointedly, "you know, as a fellow medic and a bot who'd come to respect you immensely, I feel like I should protect that reputation of yours if you asked me to. But it's too late I fear. Everyone one in this city knows by now, you're actually a nice old bot just pretending to be an old crank!"

Ratchet opened his mouth again. And for a second of two it looked as though he was certainly going to say something. But instead he just closed it again a moment later, and stood shaking his head, while he laughed out loud just a little. He was certainly laughing more all the time now. And his growing tendency for humming in the medbay was far from unknown either. Peacetime, it seemed, was a good for him, as it was for every other bot in Cybertron.

"You're working with a much stronger band now than what I started you with the other day," the old bot said, after another moment or two. His tone was serious again, and he looked over the resistance band in his teammate's hands.

"Well..." Knockout answered, with another chuckle as he pulled down against the band again, aware as always of the slight sense of pulling, but nothing unpleasant. "I suppose I might have..."

"It would seem you've doubled your resistance level already," Ratchet said, his tone a strange mix of scolding and impressed. Finally he gave a slight huff, and looked his teammate in the optics. "Just remember to be careful. It's like anything in your case... if you think you can do it, do it, and if it feels like its okay it probably is. But don't you push yourself too far. That could spell trouble and you know it!"

"I know. I feel fine so far."

"Okay. But drop that band for a minute regardless. It's time we got this done, hey?"

Knockout nodded, and with some strange hesitation he dropped the resistance band, letting it fall to the medbay floor. He held out a hand, his right one, and let the old bot carefully open the little panel on his lower left wrist, with a small wrench at the ready on the worktable beside him.

"It's been a few years now already," Ratchet remarked, and the dismay in his voice was entirely obvious. "I'm surprised you never did try to do this yourself already, or at least ask someone else to. It's not exactly something I would even count as medical exactly. Arcee could easily have done this..."

"I know..." Knockout answered, oddly uneasy. "I thought about it before, reactivating my weapons... but then I suppose I just never could see why I really needed them." He shook his head just a little, making sure to hold his hand and arm still while Ratchet worked. "I'm not sure I need them now..."

"Your weaponry of course doubles as part of your integrated medical equipment," Ratchet said, his tone near scolding again. "As you come to practice again far more, you'll need that. Besides, and more importantly I suppose, I don't want you unarmed anymore, plain and simple." The old bot paused a moment, the little wrench paused in the middle of what he was doing with it, and just shook his head as if to shake off the worst of his thoughts. "Not after you were beaten up in the street... again."

"You've come way too far to be little more than a punching bag for bots with their misguided agendas," the old bot continued, after a moment. His tone was serious as it could be. "You may have no real ability left at all with those weapons of yours. In fact I'm sure you won't. But that bot in the street yesterday... his friend years ago with that fragging bar... they'd likely have likely thought twice if you'd just been armed and they'd known it. This violence around here is only getting worse it seems. And I don't like to think it... not when it comes to a bot that I call a friend. But there may not be around around to step in the next time some bot shows up in a public street with a weapon and the idea that somehow if he can just beat you bad enough, some score might just be settled."

"I understand we have another ship on its way home," Knockout said, quite deliberately setting the conversation off in some new direction entirely, uncomfortable with the concern, because it still felt so strange to him at times just to mean a thing to anyone. And Ratchet nodded slowly.

"Mmhmm," he mumbled, nodding again. "A large population on this one too. Biggest one yet. Almost three thousand bots." He chuckled then, happily and shook his head once more. "Bulkhead will sure have his work cut out for him right along with his construction crews. The council has commissioned four new high rise housing buildings to be completed as priority projects... plus new buildings up in the commercial district soon. It's great news for us and the hospital though. This ship is bringing with it an entire small medical team."

"Oh?"

"Three trained, certified medics. Ten students... a forth frame youngling who might just die of spark break if he's passed over for medical training in a few short years."

Knockout nodded his head as He smiled just a little. And he hoped the expression appeared to be genuine. It was of course, or at least mostly so. The arrival of new bots back to their own home world was never a bad thing obviously. He was always just as happy for the refugees as anyone as. But just like every time a ship landed, he had his worries. Would the shipload bring ignorance? Angry bots that would scream insults at him for his limitations, his history, or both? Was the ship on its way filled with half way with bots in need of repairs, that would tie up the hospital while it tried to serve both them and the public already home and settled? And what of the medics on board? They would soon become his coworkers. He could only hope he'd have enough of their respect and trust to at least keep on working with any kind of efficiency at all.

"Well good evening," Arcee called out suddenly over the sound of the sliding medbay doors. And he crossed the room quickly as the doors slid shut again behind her. Cybershock trotted along beside her, her hand in her carrier's and her arm swinging happily.

"Well, if it isn't my two favourite bots!" Knockout exclaimed. And he grinned at the, both for just a second before he felt his spark suddenly drop a little, and his tank flip just slightly. With a nervous feeling quite unlike him, he questioned curiously, "Arcee, did something happen..."

"No, nothing happened," Arcee replied at once and firmly, with a good shaking of her head as she made her way quickly closer. "Well, nothing bad anyway. I took Cybershock to the playground for a while. She wanted to climb of course... and swing. We went to the sweet shop to get rust sticks because she's never had one, ever..." Arcee pulled a package from her storage compartment smiling happily while she explained that they had brought far too many back with them and they would happily share.

"Reactivating you weapons systems?" she questioned, looking closer. It was just as much an observation of course as it was a question. And Knockout gave a nod in reply, before he finally spoke again.

"Ratchet said tonight that he wanted to. I agreed to let him." He sat quiet again for just a moment, thinking. And he smiled just a little, as he added firmly. "I'm not sure I like the term 'weapons' though anymore. I'm not a combat class bot. I'm medical class. Using onboard medical gear to fight with and scare bots to death just seems completely not funny anymore..." He paused again, and just stared at his mate for a moment, anxiously. "You're okay with this?"

"More than okay with it," Arcee replied, seriously. "I'm relieved to think you might not be defenceless anymore."

"Too bad you couldn't come to the playground with us, Daddy," Cybershock said. And Knockout just barely managed to hold his arms out to catch his running youngling, the second Ratchet stepped away from him, finished.

"Next day I have away from here, I'll take you," he promised, smiling.

"You can push me on the swing," Cybershock decided. And she sat up on his lap, looking up and grinning, with a look that said the matter was without a doubt decided.

"I'm sorry Cybershock," Knockout answered, and he smiled at her again, though sadly now. "That's one thing I just can't do."

"You can't do it, because you've never tried to do it yet, Daddy," Cybershock said, matter of fact and still smiling, undeterred. Knockout looked around a little, to see Arcee standing close by and clearly dismayed. But she said nothing, allowing her mate and their daughter to interact, as she'd learned easily to let them. "I think if you just thought it over a while, and tried a few times until you got it right, you'd learn to do it Just like you've learned everything else!"

"Your carrier can push you on the swing," Knockout answered. And he smiled in assurance. "She's good at it."

"I know." the youngling said, still undeterred and still smiling. She went on looking up at him, her big blue optics staring intently. "But I want _you_ to have a turn." She shifted her position then, leaning to rest her head on her creator's front panel, just as she'd always done since she'd been smaller. And for a second she just looked thoughtful. "I won't be little forever, ya know."

Knockout had only been to the playground a few times ever. Usually he left the job of taking their youngling there instead to his mate instead. Often she'd take her while he was working. And even when he was not at work, he'd just stay home and let them go off to play. But the youngling begged and pleaded with him to go along, so a few times he'd gone. As she got bigger she'd begged him more and more. So he went more often. Twice he'd even taken her by himself, because Cybershock had begged and pleaded while Arcee was busy.

It had never made a bit of sense to him, exactly why the little bot wanted him to go. He couldn't run like her carrier could. He couldn't chase her across the landing mats, or catch her at the bottom of the slide. He could simply park himself on his mobility cart close the edge of the playground structure and watch, calling out to her to please be careful, and only hoping she would listen. Twice they had run into other little bots - younglings who knew her from their early learning classroom. And he'd sit still watching while the little ones' creators pushed their creations on swings and helped to push Cybershock too.

"She wants you to push her, to see if you can," Arcee said, laughing as she walked closer. And she smiled, as understanding so clearly downed on him. The youngling, doing exactly what she had always just so naturally done best, was only pushing him to try a brand new skill, all without pushing him at all, and instead by just having fun and being silly. She wanted him to push her on swings one day soon, because he'd never tried to before. And she never tired any more than he did, of seeing just how much he could work out ways of doing.

"I'll do the best I can to figure this one out," Knockout promised, smiling at his youngling. "I'll give it my best try."

"Speaking of trying..." Ratchet said. "How'd you like to try standing up for a while?"

"Maybe you can beat your last best time at that, Daddy!" Cybershock exclaimed, encouraging as ever. And she turned then to the old medic with a grin across her face-plate explaining, "He pulled himself right to his feet last night on our patio. And he stood a while just looking out over the rail!" The little bot paused then, and laughed, a little too amused, before she added slowly, "he sat back down though in a minute 'cause Mama was scared he might fall over the railing."

"The balconies in that building were personally installed by Bulkhead," Ratchet chuckled. "I know those rails are never going anywhere." His look turned serious thouhg in a second and he turned toward Knockout, with dismay in his optics, and frowned. "Still... I'm not sure a tenth floor railing is the best place for rehab practice, and I surely don't need to explain why to a grown bot who should know better."

"I just..." Knockout stammered helplessly. And he could not help but feel ganged up on, both by his teammate and his own family – even if it was of course all in good spirits. "I wanted to fully appreciate the view of the street!"

"I think you might be ready to try taking steps tonight," Ratchet said thoughtfully. And Knockout for all of his laughing and goofing around, stopped at once and blinked his optics silently for a second.

"Steps?" he finally managed to question. "You.. you really think I could...?"

"I think now's a good a time as any to find out." Ratchet smiled a little, and already he'd hurried across the medbay, to rummage around in a storage room. Quickly he dragged out a folded walking frame, which he unfolded just as quickly to bring back across the room with him. "I'm pretty sure your family would love to see just how this might work out."

"Yay!" Cybershock cheered, just as loudly as ever for the medbay.

She climbed down from his lap in a single fast motion, and ran a short distance, stopping then to watch him, grinning. And Knockout sat watcing the youngling with worry growing steadily in his spark. His mate, he knew would only help him calmly, doing whatever she could, just like she always did. It was their youngling he worried about. Her excitement, hope and exception was more than obvious in the way she bounced on the fronts of her feet, while her arms swing back and forth beside her. He imagined just how badly she might be disappointed if he failed - which he feared he easily would at first. And he never had liked to see his youngling sad.

Regardless, Knockout was seemingly committed by now to trying. And with a quick intake to shake of his doubt, he reached out to grab the handlebars of the frame just as soon as Ratchet had parked it safely in front of where he sat, and Arcee had grabbed it from the front, just to hold it steady.

Getting to his feet was not entirely new to him, by then. And using the handlebars to do that much was much like doing so while holding onto anything else. The walking frame though, felt far less steady or stable than anything he'd ever used to hold his weight before. And instantly he feared he would fall, just trying it. But still he tried anyway, holding his balance when it felt like he would quickly lose it. After a moment, he stood where he was, leaning forward, holding the handlebars and steady on his feet, because he hadn't fallen yet and no longer felt he would. Arcee let go of the bars, because Ratchet told her to with a quick motion of his hand. And for a second Knockout felt again like he might just fall, because it all felt to unsteady again, without her weight holding the whole contraption straight. But again he found his balance quickly. And for a moment he just stood still, with a grin on his face-plate, that he was sure resembled that of his youngling.

"You'll want to bring your left foot forward first," Ratchet explained, with confidence. "Because the right is stronger, it will more easily follow. Arcee, hold the front bars again for a moment."

Knockout feared then more than ever that he would fall hard into the floor, as he tried to lift his foot. But he got over that quickly, when he realized he could barely recall exactly how to lift his foot in a walking motion at all. He remembered how it felt to do exactly that. He'd never forgotten exactly. He'd never forgotten the feeling of any single motion, even when he could not come close to making the motions anymore. But like so much else, when it came to his own body, just remember how it felt to do it, did not mean his processor knew how anymore. He thought though at once, of kicking a ball, because he'd relearned that already. And suddenly it all came together, because the movements were related. So he kicked his foot forward a little, lifting it just slightly and letting it land again on the floor, before he tried the very same with the other one.

"Try it again," Arcee said, still holding the frame steady in front of him. And he did the very same as before, repeating it again after that and repeating it again, until he'd taken a few small awkward steps across the medbay floor.

"That's soooo cool!" Cybershock exclaimed. And she ran across the floor at once, grabbing for her creator's arm, in one careless second, just as soon as he'd stopped again, tired and shaky from just a few short steps. Knockout lost his balance at once because of her weight pulling suddenly against him. And he fell forward onto his knees, managing to let go of the frame and catch himself with his hands before it ended up worse.

So many bots, he knew would have scolded the little one for that. And looking up, he saw that Arcee was indeed clearly about to. But he laughed at once, smiling a smile that made his mate pause in her tracks with a shake of her head. Knockout could not move to sitting from his knees – he had no come close enough to relearning the mechanics of that yet. And he couldn't stay kneeling because he was already falling forward badly just trying to hold his balance that way. So, with a loud laugh, and look on his face-plate that surely looked ridiculous, he simply let himself fall over. Then he rolled, as he'd learned early on, across the floor until he reached a position from which he could sit himself up again.

"I'm sorry," Cybershock said. And for a second a hint of a tiny coolant tear appeared in each of her blue optics, as she stepped toward him again carefully now. "I made you fall. I didn't mean to..."

"I know you didn't mean to," Knockout answered quickly. "It's alright." And he held out his hands at once, waiting just a second until she promptly clambered into his lap. Instantly her near tears turned to a smile again. And he understood how to her, his awkward way of rolling to sit just looked like silliness and play. He smiled brighter then. He held out a hand, and she instantly smacked his as intended in a firm 'high five.' Behind them Arcee just laughed.

 **Notes\ Yes, I know this chapter probably didn't make complete sense in parts. And also... loose ends! I'll tie those up. Promise. It'll all fit together just fine, if I do this right, lol. And as for the little green youngling bot, she's obviously going to become important as well, as you probably guessed by now. I have a plan here!**


	8. Chapter 8

Bulkhead grumbled under his intakes, embarrassed as he limped into the medbay. He stepped around stacked supplies and storage trunks from the newly arrived refugee ship, and wonder if he was only in the way. He would have simply left and not bothered with seeking care to avoid getting in the way. But he knew from the pain he was in that he might really have hurt himself. And he knew well that no good ever came from waiting it out.

"Hello?" he called out over a decent stack of crates left close to the middle of the large open room. And he chuckled a little, cheerful despite the pain that shot through his right leg when he stepped down just a little too hard. "Anybody home?"

"Hello?" a voice called right back. But the voice was strangely unfamiliar. And it came from somewhere close to the back of the medbay.

There was a shuffling noise of some heavy crates being slid across the floor, and heavy footsteps, before a bot appeared, around the stack of supplies. He was red and white, and his paint similar to Ratchet's, with both Autobot and medical symbols on his armour. But this bot was clearly new. Bulkhead blinked in surprise, not expecting to meet a new arrival that day, despite building housing for a large number of them.

"What can I do for you?" the new arrival, clearly now part of the medical team, questioned plesently.

"I... uh... bit of a workplace accident," Bulk explained, somewhat hesitant, and more embarrassed now then ever. "Is Ratchet around?"

"He's been busy most of the morning with another patient," the new medic answered calmly. And he glanced around the medbay, so clearly still getting his bearings. "You could wait for him I suppose, if you want to... But I'd be happy to see you right away. That leg looks... painful."

"It is," Bulkhead admitted, still hesitant as he limped toward the repair table the new arrival gestured to – the one closest to him in order to save him much further walking.

"So, workplace accident you say?" the medic powered up his scanner, while he opened a tool kit, he'd placed neatly onto a workable beside him. "My name is Ambulon, by the way. You'll be seeing me around here a fair bit from now on. Could be you be a little more specific about this accident?"

"Fell off a scaffold," Bulk' lowered his head to look at the floor then, feeling quite perfectly ridiculous for being so clumsy. And though he knew it was dangerous to do so in the first place, he was thankful somehow that he'd been working alone that morning, because no one had seen him fall.

"How far up was the scaffold?" the medic questioned, his tone professional and showing not a hint of judgment. He carefully scanned Bulk's right leg, and winced just a little at whatever he'd seen on his scanner.

"About four floors or so..."

"That..." the new bot blinked his optics a moment, visibly shocked, "that is a long way to fall. You're lucky all that seems to hurt so far is your leg. And I'm shocked that you just walked on in here alone. I'd like to do full body scans on you just to be sure you didn't do anything else, because you well could have."

"You appear... uneasy..." the medic observed, calmly as ever after Bulkhead, following his directions, had lay down on the repair table.

"Nah... I just..." Bulkhead was about to let it go then and say nothing more. But something in the new medic's calm and friendly attitude made him want to explain, so he did. "I've never exactly liked anything to do with medics. Ratchet's the only doctor I've seen in half a century."

"I can see why," the new bot said, understanding. He gave a friendly little laugh as he scanned Bulk's frame slowly, starting at the head. "He's a wonderful medic. And a lot to live up to I must say. I'm nervous just being here, working under the infamous old bot. I was downright scared to learn he of any bot was the one I'd work for here. Because, well we all know he's got a reputation for anger... and throwing things."

"Nah. That's mostly just stories. Old doc bot is well liked around here. And he's a great bot to work if you just respect him."

"As I've learned already," the new arrival said, chattering on a bit, obviously nervous. "And clearly Ratchet thinks I've got some potential, because he's already offered me that open administration job."

"Oh?" That was news to Bulkhead, who'd only been aware of other plans. But he shook his head a little and said nothing else.

"Yes indeed," the new medic said, cheerful as ever. He turned off the scanner and set it down. "I told him I'd think it over a few days, but I'm leaned well toward accepting. It's a great opportunity for a bot like me... Well, it looks like you've escaped any serious damage in that fall. A couple of pulled wires in that right leg and that's it. Tell you what... I think I'm going to try lightly bracing it for you for a few days and we'll see how it does at self repairing. If nothing happens you'll need minor surgery on those wires, but let's try to avoid it shall we. You're off work for at least those few days, and I mean it. No training gym or any such thing either!"

 **#####**

"Ratchet," Bulkhead called, quietly. And his voice was just barely above a whisper as he peeked around the door is the the special care room a short ways down the hall from the medbay. He hoped the quickly catch a moment of the old bot's time, if he wasn't busy. But mostly he simply wished to help him if he was. Bulk' was by no means a medic of course. And he was in fact perhaps even under trained when it come to his field first aid. But still he quite enjoyed the job of jumping in when needed and simply taking orders on completing simple tasks and fetching supplies.

"Bulk'" Ratchet answered back quietly from inside the dim lit room. He stood up from a chair in been dsitting in to work, beside the recharge station of a tiny green youngling bot. He held a small pile of balled up damp towels in his hands and held them out at once, sure enough welcoming the implied offer of some help. "Take these please, and toss them in the wash bin by the door."

"It's just CR fluid," he continued, still quietly, when Bulkhead immediately frowned at the stuff that soaked the white towels as soon as he'd grabbed them. "It's nothing dangerous, don't worry. She was covered in it because I just got her out a short while ago."

"So, this is the little bot that come in the other day?" Bulkhead said. He turned to throw the towels into the bin, and let the lid close quickly behind them. Ratchet nodded once, a little sadly, and Bulk' smiled for a second.

"She's so fragging cute," he observed, because she truly was, and this was the first time he'd actually seen her.

"She is," Ratchet agreed. And he smiled just a little himself now, looking from his patent to his teammate and back again. "Her name is Switchblade, but no one even seems to use her name anymore. Knockout nicknamed her 'Little bot' and somehow it just kind of caught on quick."

"I didn't realize she was quite that young."

"Indeed she is." And Ratchet shook his head, clearly sad at that. "A bit older than Cybershock obviously. Probably just a little older than Takeoff and Runway."

"Doctor Ratchet," the youngling mumbled quietly, and her voice was so calm and curious. Her optics were closed and while it looked like she was in recharge, she clearly was not entirely. "Who's that?"

"That's Bulkhead," the old bot answered, smiling a little, though of coruse the tiny bot couldn't see him do it with her optics closed. "He's a good friend of mine. Another Autobot. Why don't you say hello?"

"Hello," the small green painted youngling said slowly.

She was clearly tired, fighting just to say out of recharge for a couple moments longer. And her condition was obviously still far from perfect. Her right arm in particular was clearly almost no use at all. And it was been carefully wrapped against her body with thin metallic bindings quite obviously for the simple purpose of just keeping it out of her way, for her comfort and safety But still, from the tone of her voice in that simple greeting, she sounded so happy. Her optics finally opened then, just a second after she'd spoken. And Bulkhead blinked his own for a moment in amazement with just how bright blue they were.

"Hey there, Little bot," Bulk' said grinning. And he laughed a little, though he wasn't sure exactly what was funny. And at that, the tiny bot, laying still, exactly where she was, because she clearly had little ability or strength yet to move much at all, grinned the most impressive grin at him that he'd ever seen.

"Do you want me to pack you up in the bot-bag again?" Ratchet asked the youngling, and she appeared to consider for just a second before she slowly nodded a little.

Bulkhead just watched a moment, confused and curious, before he noticed that the tiny bot lay on top of an open metallic medical transport cover, which lay neatly over her recharge station. And he watched, chuckling just a little, as Ratchet carefully bundled her into it, pulling the sides up around her body, before closing snaps so it would stay put, and finally fastening together straps that closed over the front. The youngling was clearly in recharge before he he finished the process, and the old bot stepped away from her, shaking his head just a little, while, he chuckled with amusement.

"It's entirely silly," he said, heading for the door and leading bulkhead out with him as he went. The door half clsoed behind them as they left the room. "I know as well as any bot, it's absolute silliness to keep her wrapped up like that. But sometimes you just do what works... It certainly isn't hurting anything..."

"Yeah," Bulk' said, easily agreeing.

"What happened to your leg?" Ratchet questioned, concerned as they walked a short hallway that took then close to the outside of the medbay doors. It was clear he'd noticed then for the first time that his teammate was injured. And now that he had noticed he was quickly in medi-bot mode, looking him over, inspecting him with his optics and waiting for him to explain it all in detail.

"I just took a little fall at work," Bulkhead said, downplaying the whole event on purpose, because he just didn't feel like a second scolding by a second medi-bot. Besides, he still didn't feel any less ridiculous for having fallen to begin with, than he did when he'd first showed up for treatment. He shrugged then, and gave a nervous chuckle, brushing it off in hopes the old old bot would too. "That new medic, Ambulon fixed me up easily enough. Said it's just a couple of pulled wires, but I'll be in this brace and off work for a while... I was just looking for you because I wanted to talk to you a minute."

"Alright..." Ratchet muttered, clearly hesitant to let the matter drop so easily. But he did let it drop regardless, because clearly anything medical was already well under control.

"That new medic tells me you offered the administrator job to him," Bulk' said. He sat down carefuly on a bench close to him and against the wall, because his leg really began to hurt so much he could barely stay standing, even with the leg brace on. And he knew full well that any try at 'toughing it out' would only give the old bot cause for the scolding he was still desperate to avoid from him.

"Indeed I did," Ratchet answered. And he sounded oddly proud of his decision. "You're calling him the 'new medic.' And I guess that does make sense because he's new here. But Ambulon is obviously not brand new to medicine in general of course. Far from it. He's got centuries of experience behind him. He's well accomplished and he knows his stuff. Plus, he's got all the right passion for medicine, helping bots for the right reasons... I never had the honour of working with him before he got here, though I do wish I had. It's clear to me even after only a couple of days, he's a perfect choice."

"But... that was Knockout's job. Listen... it's prob'ly none of my business but I don't think you can just pass him over for the job you already offered him, all because someone else come along and that you feel that someone may be better. I'm just a construction bot now, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything. And I think that could be a slippery slope right back into the old functionalist ways of..."

"Bulkhead!" Ratchet said firmly. And Bulk' stopped talking at once, understanding quickly, had he;d been off strangely on a tangent with little clear reason for it. "I didn't pass Knockout over. Of course I wouldn't do that, because everything you said is completely right. I offered Knockout the job, informally last year and he said he'd take it. Of course you know that. But I offered it officially just the day before that ship arrived, and he turned it down. I offered him the same job twice more in two days. He turned it down twice more. Bulk', Knockout doesn't want to be in some office, seeing patients here and there between stacks of paperwork, because we're swamped. He's put in his application for a new position in the hospital..." Ratchet shrugged, then chuckled a little under his intakes, adding, "that's formality of course. We know full well the job is his."

"Sorry 'bout the whole jumping to conclusions thing," Bulkhead said serious. And he sat a second, frowning. "I guess I'm just a little edgy lately."

"I would say that's almost an understatement, Bulk'" Ratchet chuckled with a slight shake of his head. "It's not my place of course to tell anyone where Knockout is heading next. But surely he'd be more than excited to tell you himself next time you see him."

* * *

Painting the walls was certainly not a difficult job. But it was rather a tedious one. And if there was one thing Smokescreen truly disliked, it was tedious work. He stood, at present, roughly halfway up a step ladder, balancing a paint can in one hand and a roller in the other, painting the wall behind the hospital 'registration and info' desk, a cheerful light green. Ratchet had chosen the colour, well intended he'd said, to brighten the place up and to put patients at ease, because apparently the old dingy grey was just plain depressing. Smokescreen agreed of course. Every bot surely did. And he certainly thought the new colour was a wonderful choice. He simply did not like to be the bot with the job of applying it.

He grumbled a little to himself, bored with the work. And he nearly fell off the ladder when he reached a little to far, stretching out with the roller in hand to paint the top right corner. He grumbled a little more when he remembered he'd agreed to paint the waiting room after he was done with the info desk. And he groaned when he realized just how big that entire job actually was. He'd surely be at all afternoon.

"Ya got some green paint on your own paintjob there, kid," Wheeljack said, pausing in the small space near the front doors, as he wandered on inside. And instead Smokescreen groaned with dismay.

"What? Where?" he cried, alarmed as he struggled still on the ladder, to look over as much of his own body as he could, all without either falling or splattering anymore paint from the roller onto himself.

"Fragger," he mumbled, under his intakes a moment later, after it had become clearly just from the look on his teammate's face-plate, that the former wrecker was simply trying to wind him up a bit. And still standing on the step ladder, Smokescreen held out the roller to him, hopefully. Wheeljack only shook his head a little.

"Nah, I'm not here ta paint, Smoky. No time for that right now. Gotta grab some fuel before I head downtown to meet with Ultra Magnus. I'm heading over with him to look underneath that defunct electronics shop."

"Makes sense he'd ask you to help with that mess," Smokescreen said, after a second in which he'd thought about it, slightly confused. "He wants you on the case for your background in explosives?"

"Yep." Wheeljack nodded once, before he walked away again quickly, and clearly in a bit of a hurry to get off to where he was going.

"Well," Smokescreen mumbled to himself, speaking out loud into the empty space, because he simply could. "I guess I should be grateful we have building left to paint after centuries or war..." that thought made him smile then. And his his surprise he found himself humming, happily as he went on reaching up just as high as he could with the roller.

A strange sound caught his attention then. And on alert at once, years of warrior instincts kicking in quickly, Smokescreen crept almost silently down the steps of the ladder. Standing still at the bottom of it, he reached down to carefully set the paint can and roller on the floor, before he turned around slowly, listening more anymore noises.

The sound, he realized, listening closer, was the noise of a ground bridge, whirring away somewhere close by and out of sight. And his first thought was to simply be relieved because of course, an activated ground bridge inside the base was not, as a rule, a cause for alarm. But the noise of it came from behind a door behind him and slightly to his right. And Smokescreen shook his head a little, realizing the the noise had alarmed him at once because it came from the last place a bot might expect to hear such a sound at all. The room, just behind that simple pull-open door, was an overflow storage room for the medbay. And he shook his head again, realizing it was now filled with common first aid and medical supplies.

"What the... pit?" Smokescreen muttered under his intakes, as he walked over slowly and yanked open the storage room door.

"Soundwave?" He exclaimed shocked, just as soon as he'd opened the door to find the mentioned bot, on his knees on the storage room floor. The bot in question was scuffed from head to foot, and badly dented. He shook and trembled horribly, and long and terrible scratches across the entire front of him, amde it clear he might have at some point been dragged roughly across the ground.

"Scrap, what happened to you?" Smokescreen asked in alarm. And he looked the tall navy blue and purple bot over in shock He should not have been surprised to see Soundwave of any bot inside the tiny room. He was after all, the only bot he knew of anywhere, who would simply call up and drop ground bridges at will anywhere he wanted to. But to find the bot in such a state... he knew at once that's what had startled him the most.

"Where the frag did you go?" Smokescreen questioned when after a moment Soundwave, not surprisingly, said nothing at all. "It's been days you know? And a lot's happened in those days."

Soundwave's face-plate was hidden as always, behind the dark cover he wore. But suddenly his hands went toward it. And with a terrible gasping sound, making it clear he could barely catch his intakes, he pulled the cover off quickly. Smokescreen had known full well the defector's face-plate was all but destroyed. Still, it took some effort not to gasp out loud and stumble back against the door frame behind him, shocked by the state of it. And this, he was aware, after the start of repairs.

"Soundwave," Smokescreen said then. The tone was his voice was even only because he forced it to be so. "Close... close the ground bridge."

He'd realized himself only a second before, that the portal, behind where Soundwave kneeled on the floor, was still open and actively spinning. And Soundwave, still gasping badly with his intakes – seemingly in the midst of what was quite clearly fast becoming some sort of panic attack – closed the bridge at once.

"I think you need to go to medical?" Smokescreen told him. He didn't like the look of those bad scratches, and stepped forward a few steps, with a hand extended. But he was careful not to touch the bot's body armour, more than well aware of how much he disliked most any form of contact under any circumstances. "I'll comm Ratchet... let him know we are on our way in..."

Soundwave only waved off his offer at once, with an urgent motion of his hand – which shock with shocking violence as he did so. He struggled for a moment just to get himself onto his feet. And he stumbled just as soon as he'd managed it, falling back onto his knees again with a loud clanging thump against the metal floor.

"I'll comm for Firestorm then," Smokescreen decided quickly. And to his relief he saw Soundwave nod a little, agreeing to at least let her help him.

Firestorm appeared though right outside the door, less than a second after he'd first decided he would call for her, and of course before he'd even had a chance to. It was instantly clear that Laserbeak had lead her there, following some silent call herself, because the tiny flying bot sat on the handlebar of Firestorm's yellow painted walking frame, with her wings flapping urgently, while she practically screamed noise, clearly with something to say. The small bird finally leapt from the bars of the walking frame and flew toward Soundwave who despite his shaking and his terror at... something, allowed her to dock at once. Instantly she become, to any bot who knew no better, simply a part of his chest panel.

"Soundwave.." Firestorm said slowly, and she sat down on storage room floor, just as soon as she'd quickly nodded her thanks in Smokesceen's direction. "Are... are you alright. I think you've bridged yourself right into a store room..."

Soundwave slowly nodded, and Firestorm continued on, just as calmly as the shaking of her small voice would allow. "Did... something happen?"

Another nod in reply.

"I'm taking you to medical," Firestorm said firmly. She may have been young – still barely old enough to hold adult status on Cybertron. But the tone of her voice was, in that second, one that left no room for argument.

* * *

"Higher, Daddy! Higher!" Hotwire squealed, laughing happily while he was pushed, just as high as Bumblebee could push him, on a playground swing.

"Sorry Buddy," 'Bee said, laughing back. "I think that's as high as the swing will go."

"Oh – kay..." Hotwire said, sighing his obvious disappointment. And 'Bee gave the swing a nother light shove as it stared to slowly down all to quickly. The little bot laughed again, before he gave a cheer of joy and held on tight to the chains in his hands.

Bumblebee smiled, just watching his creation a moment. It surprised him, though not in a bad way of course, just how high Hotwire wanted to swing in the first place. The youngling was, in general, meek and skittish, both on the playground and in life overall. When he ran he took it slow, fearing a trip and fall. And when he climbed, on rare occasions he did so at all, he'd climb only past his own height, hanging on tight to anything he could and searching almost too carefully for his hand and footholds. For the longest time he'd disliked the playground slide, because it was 'too fast' for him to feel safe on.

He thought a second of his youngling's best playmate, Cybershock, who was of cruse, just as bold and reckless, as Hotwire was nervous and careful. Speedbreaker, he knew well, feared that child was rbound to break her neck one day – even if said youngling was impressively aware of her own surroundings and oddly careful with landing her death defying jumps. 'Bee chuckled to himself a second with a tiny shake of his head, sure as anything that it had clearly been Cybershock who had fianllly taught Hotwire to enjoy the swing for it's full potential.

He chuckled again, this time with relief, at knowing that at elast he would never likely need to worry about his own youngling jumping from the swing, as Cybershock did, on an apparently regular basis. Speedbreaker had relayed stories - while she shook her head and cringed – of how she'd seen the tiny bot leap from swings at twenty feet in the air, hitting the ground hard on her feet, and rolling across the ground laughing like it was simply the funniest thing ever just to do that.

"Where's Cybershock?" Hotwire asked then. Sure enough, he looked around for his best friend on the playground, because she was often there when he was. The swing slowed again, and 'Bee gave it another hard push.

"She's probably at home, with her own family," Speedbreaker answered their youngling. She smiled assurance, but the look of something clsoe to relief on her face-plate was unmistakable. 'Bee knew well of her growing worries when it came to letting the two little ones play together outdoors, as they both so loved too. She'd expressed her concerns more than once over easy it would be for Cybershock to get Hotwire injured – even though it would of course obviously be accidental.

"'Bee," Speedbearker said a brief second later. She sat, perched on the swing next to the one Hotwire was using, her hands holding the chains lightly, while she pushed on foot against the ground lightly, causing the swing to rock a little. "Be careful. Not so high..."

"Speedy, he's fine," 'Bee answered, laughing a little as his bondmate's fretting. "Watch. He's holding on. He loves it." With that, he pushed her too. Standing behind her swing, he grabbed her from behind and pulled her back toward him, before he promptly let go.

Speedbreaker had never swung when she was a youngling herself. Born and raised on a refugee ship, she'd never even seen a playground then. And for a second she squeaked with dismay when her mate let her go. But quickly, and with a tiny laugh, she simply pushed herself forward on the swing with a forward kick of her legs, and processed to swing with their child.

"I so understand why the younglings love that," she said, laughing as she let the swing stop again after many long moments. And she sat again, just rocking lightly on it with her feet on the ground. Slowly she shook her head and sighed. "At one point I might just have been worried you'd send me into spark separation by pushing me like that. But now I suppose it would actually be a good thing..."

"Yeah," 'Bee answered, smiling while he laughed.

"I can't believe I've carried past the newsparks' full maturation. I fully expected they'd be early since we've got two of them."

"It's certainly possible to over-carry with twins. It's sure not common, as far as I've read my text-pads. But it's not impossible. And they were still both clearly happy and healthy at our last check up yesterday."

"I know. I guess I'm just excited I can't wait to meet them both..."

"Getting nervous?" 'Bee guessed. He gave Hotwire another push on his swing before he stood behind his mate, smiling understanding at her.

"Maybe a little bit, yeah," Speedy said, thinking. "I mean, sure I have had a newspark before. So it won't all be entirely new this time around. But it's never the same every time. We've never had twins... and Ratchet was talking this morning about inducing separation in a day or two, if they don't hurry up and do this on their own."

"Jumping jacks," 'Bee exclaimed, grinning. And Speedy spun around on the swing, to look at him half sideways, until he explained. "It stands to reason... the jumping motion. It might just shake things up a bit, get them wanting out."

"Is this medically safe?" Speedbreaker questioned after getting up from the swing to make a half sparked effort at jumping up and down near it.

"Sure it is," 'Bee answered, assuring her. "Most things are much safer now, because spark separation is the desired outcome at this point, instead of a risk to be avoided."

"Mama," Hotwire said, hopping up from the swing just as soon as it had completely stopped moving. And he ran the few feet between them, to pull lightly in Speedbreaker's arm, urgently. "Mama, slide down the slide with me!"

The little bot, of course could not have known a thing of his creators' current situation, or understood why exactly his carrier had begun to jump and down like she as doing. But he saw her 'playing.' And in his little processor, it was clear it only made sense then that perhaps she ought to play with him.

"Sure!" Spedbreaker answered, laughing as she hurried behind him, climbing up to slide down the playground slide with Hotwire sitting on her lap. Bumblebee only laughed loudly at them both, knowing well it certainly could not hurt a thing.

"Am I gonna be a big browder soon?" Hotwire asked curious, sitting on his carrier's lap on the bottom of the slide, after she'd gone down with him a handful of times. The youngling smiled, reaching up with one small hand, to rest it gently on Speedy's spark chamber, beneath which he understood full well his two siblings happily spun around and around.

"You will," Speedbreaker said, smiling back at him. She pulled him closer to her, hugging him tight, until he giggled. "You excited, Hotwire?"

"Yeah!" the little bot exclaimed in answer, before promply turning so that his little silver face-plate rested close to Speedy's chest panel.

"Hewo in dare!" he called cheerfully, to the newsparks inside.

* * *

"Well, I think I've done about all I can at the moment," Ratchet said. His expression was serious, dismayed and sad. He stood in the middle of the medbay, still close to where he had been working, next to a repair table Soundwave recharged on. And slowly, he shook his head a little. "It's cosmetic damage for the most part... a lot of scuffs and scratches... a pile of dents."

"I... I..." Firestorm stammered, nervous and shaken, beside him. "Th... those images he showed us. I don't understand what it all meant..." She stood a second, just looked down at Soundwave, confused, before she sighed and just leaned against the raised side railing of the repair table, defeated. "Soundwave always said I wouldn't understand, when I tried to ask him about so many things..."

"You don't understand those things because you didn't see the war," Ratchet answered. He let his hand rest on the young bot's small shoulder panel, and offered a smile of assurance. "I'm glad everyday to think you didn't too. You and Speedy and so many others... you were spared, safe aboard your ships, thank Primus for that. Your lack of understanding, as I see it, is probably a good thing. And I know Soundwave would agree."

"I know," Firestorm sighed again. "But I can't help him if I don't even know what he was trying to tell us..."

Soundwave had gone to medical quite willingly enough. But still, even when only in the presence of Ratchet and Firestorm, had hadn't said a word. He'd only sat for long moments trembling hard from obvious shock, until, in response to begging from both of them to please explain... something, he'd displayed moving images, memories stored in his own processor, on the wall across the room. In the absence of his face covering he'd used the wall as a screen. That much was obvious – though that certainly was a trick no one had seen from him (or any bot) before. And there had been audio too, recordings of a voice screaming and angry, in some sub-dialect of Cybertronian that Firestorm was just barely familiar with at all. Nothing had matched up, at least not fully. And in his own shock it was clear that Soundwave had struggled just to piece it together that well at all. And he'd dropped unconscious only moments after that, nearly tumbling to the floor from his seated position, before Ratchet had quickly grabbed him.

"Ratchet..." Firestorm said, trembling just a little, remembering everything she'd seen projected onto the wall. She reached up a little, pulling half helplessly at the old medic's arm, just like a youngling may have done, and sure her optics were at nearly twice the size they should have been. "Who was that huge silver bot...?"

"Megatron. You surely know at least some of his story behind that one. Once leader of the 'cons... Once the greatest enemy of the Autobots. Now in willing exile somewhere on Cybertron..."

"That's him?" Firestorm cringed, while she went right on trembling. From what she had seen just a moment before, the bot in question had anger issues and so much worse. Of course she'd known that much. Every bot on Cybertron knew that. But she'd watched, in the imaged projected onto the medbay wall, as the horrible bot, raged, and ranted like a crazed and senseless maniac. The audio, that Soundwave had played back, allowed her to hear his voice perfectly. And even in the language in which he'd bellowed and yelled, it was clear he'd half lost his mind.

"It looked like..." Firestorm mumbled, horrified as she allowed herself to put together just as much as she could on her own, to make her own guess. "He tried to kill him..." she looked down again at Soundwave, helpless as tears threatened to fall from her optics. "He might just have done it too, if Soundwave hadn't managed to run..."

"That's exactly what happened," Ratchet said. And he nodded, firmly but still clearly saddened and disbelieving. "It's obvious he wanted to beat him to death... probably break his neck..."

"But Ratchet...?" Firestorm said. The tears in her optics fell then, and she didn't even try to stop then, because she knew too well she'd only fail to. Soundwave still lay, quite obviously in unintended recharge. And she watched him a moment, wondering if perhaps she ought to hope he would soon wake back up again, or hope he would not. "It makes no sense. Soundwave served as Megatron's most loyal officer, up until the end of the war. He was a commanding officer... he helped to build the most feared army the world ever saw... Now Megatron wants him dead?"

"Megatron has lost it, I fear," Ratchet answered, confirming Firestorm's thoughts and her fears. "The language he was speaking in – That language once common to Kaon. I don't speak it of course – The city I come from was well on the opposite side of the planet. But I can understand it well enough... He called Soundwave a broken spark. A mistake of his own making. He spoke about how he felt like he'd broken him in his efforts to rule the world – made a mindless and brutal killer of a bot that could have been good. He saw Soundwave as part of some terrible plague he'd left on Cybertron, and part of his ranting... it was all about his wish to rid the world of mistakes he'd made..."

"He thinks now that Soundwave is some terrible monster? A sparkless killing machine to be stopped in the name of some greater good?" Tears poured down Firestorm's face-plate now as she spoke. And though he was of course still recharging, she grabbed Soundwave's hands with ehr own, holding then tightly as she could, just as if she could somehow protect him. "He's not. He's so not. He can love! He can do good... use his skills to help other bots. He's got a seat on the council, and he's using his influence for positive changes..."

"It's like I said," Ratchet mumbled sadly. "Magatron is clearly losing his mind. That ranting was not the ranting of any sane bot. The Autobots fought against him for centuries and I can tell you at once, I've never seen him act anything quite like that."

"Wha... what do we do...?"

"I'll be honest here and say I haven't got a clue yet. I'll need to bring this matter to the rest of the Autobots obviously. If you're willing I'd like you to attend that meeting with me. It will be soon, I can tell you that much. Meanwhile, Soundwave will be protected... I can tell you that much too."

"Firestorm..." Soundwave mumbled, speaking almost under his intakes as his optics snapped open quickly.

"Hi," Firestorm said back at to him at once. And she smiled just a little. "You look a little better. You took a bit of a nap..."

"Firestorm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Soundwave mumbled. His body began to shake again, and tears fell from his optics without any warning at all.

"It wasn't you fault," Firestorm answered quickly. Ratchet must have stepped away a second – though she didn't notice – because he suddenly stepped in close beside her again, with a container of energon, which he promptly gave her, while gesturing with his optics for her to coax Soundwave into drinking it. "You didn't know..."

"You'd never understand," was Soundwave's mumbled reply to that. And he lay, just shaking his head in suborn refusal as she tried to offer him the fuel container. Even when she carefully lifted the head of the repair table, forcing him into a decent mostly seated position again, he only continued to shake his head a another moment. Finally his hand wave away the fuel entirely. And he nearly caused her to drop it with his forceful motion.

"I do understand," Firestorm said firmly. "I may not have lived on a world at war, but I can learn. I can listen..." She held the container once again closer to his shaking hand, and looked at him, her optics begging. "Please?"

"Mistake..." Soundwave mumbled horribly. And his shaking only grew worse instead of any better. He did take the container though, or at least he tried to. His shaking was so bad he couldn't quite do it on his own.

"Judgment – poor. Myself – misguided. Understanding – new. As never before..." he continued, still mumbling so badly. And she helped him hold the container, so that he could drink from it. Even then he managed to spill a fair bit of it over himself in the process. "Firestorm... My fault. Everything. Myself - disgusting... vile... unredeemable... Megatron – correct. I need to die for everything ive ever done..."

"Soundwave, stop," Firestorm demanded firmly. She helped him take another small sip from the fuel container. This time none spilled. "Please don't say such things about yourself. None of it's true. I know it isn't. You don't deserve to die for anything. You don't. No more than any Autobot does for anything they did. War does things to bots... to society. The Autobots say it all the time."

"Can we... go home?" Soundwave questioned, still speaking slowly, his voice still shaky and mumbling, after a good moment in which he'd just sat staring at nothing at all, clear across the room. It was clear as he talked, that he was speaking to Firestorm. But she in turn looked up at the old medic, helpless.

"Shortly," Ratchet answered. His tone was direct, and serious, though not without compassion. He looked Soundwave in the optics for a second or two. "I want to be sure you're not going to lose consciousness again. Finish that fuel. I mean it! I know fragging well you badly needed it, because you would not have collapsed like you did in the first place, if you hadn't been dangerously depleted."

A door slid open at the back of the medbay. And Firestorm watched Knockout roll though on his cart. He carried a youngling bot – quite obviously one of his patients, and bundled strangely into a silvery metallic blanket – on his lap. He held her with one arm while he drove. And he paused, nodding a simple 'hello,' before he retrieved a data pad from his cart's little side basket, and handed it to Ratchet.

"Welcome back," he said, a second later, and looking right in Soundwave's direction. He had little idea at all of what had happened, obviously. He'd been busy with a patient of his own. But his so clearly understood at once, that it was all completely serious, based only on the look in his optics.

"You have my comm-code if you ever want to talk" he offered, understanding. "And you've got my home address..."

At first Soundwave only nodded once, and just slightly. Slowly though he looked him in the optics once again, and mumbled, "thank you."

"This one is certainly ready for the ward today." Knockout nodded toward the yongling in recharge on his lap. And he smiled, shifted her weight just a little. The little bot started to wake up, as soon as he did so. But he began to rock the cart back and forth a little, with his left hand back on the hand control, until she promptly settled again.

"I'm both impressed and amazed with just how good she looks already," Ratchet mused, nodding his approval.

The youngling, still of course in recharge, could not see her. And she was certainly not aware of much of anything at all. But Firestorm found herself smiling in her direction, regardless. Emotions came up then, and she barely understood what each of them was. She decided quickly however that she didn't want to know, didn't want to try or to think about them at all. So instead she looked away again, her attention back on Soundwave – because he'd started to speak again - as Knockout drove away with the little bot he was holding.

"Smokescreen said a lot has happened..." Soundwave said. And his tone was mostly questioning. He took another sip from the fuel container. And this time he managed it on his own.

"It has," Ratchet answered, his tone clearly somewhat hesitant. "Right now may not be the best time to discuss all this. But since you asked... The night you left, there was another explosion downtown This time it was inside a building, down in the basement. That youngling Knockout was transporting a moment ago – she was nearly killed that night. Her creator owns the building. He's locked up in the city cells now for crimes involving illegal explosives, among other things."

"The patrol-bots came to talk to me twice now," Firestorm added, continuing on where the old medic stopped speaking. "They don't the timing of you leaving. They're looking for a connection where there isn't one. You've got to contact Ultra Magnus. Explain your side. He's fair. He'll listen. He still wants to believe me when I say you had nothing to do with any of this..."

* * *

"A great idea, getting outside for a while," Arcee said. And she smiled brightly, looking around courtyard from her place on her favourite iron bench in the south-east corner. Cybershock sat in her lap, head tight against her chest panel, and her arms wrapped around on of her carrier's. The youngling was not unhappy. Not by any means. She'd been smiling and joyfully chattering away all afternoon. And it seemed she was simply in the mood for hugs at that moment because she wanted to.

"It's certainly nice enough out here for it," Knockout answered, smiling back. He sat on his mobility cart, holding Switchblade on his lap, chuckling a little as soon as the kid smiled along with them. And he gestured down toward her with his optics. "And it's good for this one here to finally get sunshine again. She was so unsettled on the ward... She's stronger now. Makes sense I suppose that she'd be lonely and bored."

"She obviously loves it out here" Arcee commented. "It'll be nice to see her running around one day soon."

The damaged youngling was no longer packed up in the transport cover – she'd asked Knockout all by herself if she could be taken out of there as soon as they'd come outside - and the cover now lay in a crumbled pile nearby on the ground. But her body was still weakened by the system shock her injuries had caused her. And her still somewhat present, though much lower level of pain, made it all the worse. She stayed, in that moment, partly sitting but mostly laying, across Knockout's bent knees, her head on his armrest and lifting it a bit now and then to look around and smile.

"We'll start a little physical therapy with her as early as tomorrow if she's up to it," Knockout explained, nodding agreement. "Ratchet's already starting work on a brand new arm for her..."

Cybershock lifted her head then from Arcee's chest panel. And quickly she sat up straight again before hopping off her lap and onto the ground. The youngling stood a moment, before she plopped herself down playfully on the ground close by. The little one opened her tiny storage compartment, something she'd only learned days before that she had at all, and pulled out the four toy cars she'd brought along, stored in there – Arcee carried two more in her compartment, because Cybershock's was full.

The red blue and purple youngling, sat a moment playing quietly on the smooth metal ground, pushing a couple of small toy earth-cars back and forth. And once she made a sound meant to be the honking of a horn, when she pushed one in front of the other, just as though it was driving recklessly in city traffic. The damaged youngling in Knockout's lap, lifted her head again, and she stayed that way a while, just watching Cybershock playing, smiling curiously over the little vehicles on the ground close by.

"Wanna play with one?" Cybershock asked the damaged youngling bot, smiling brighter than before. And she stood up again, in one fast motion, grabbing all four toys as she did, so that she could run them over to her.

Switchblade reached gently for a little yellow Mitsubishi lancer, with her one usable hand. And when she couldn't come close to reaching well enough to grab it, Cybershock simply handed it to her. Putting the toy right onto her hand, waiting until she had a firm hold of it, before letting it go.

"You should come to the youngling centre," Cybershock said to her fellow youngling. And so clearly she saw her simply as just another child, little different at all from herself. "My Mama teaches there, and we always have fun. Yes-ta-day we learned to build a-lectric circuit boards! And we made sweets!"

"I want to go to school," the damaged youngling said quietly. And the tone of desperate longing in her voice told anyone who listened, that it was not a brand new realization on her part.

"Well I'm excited to have in my classroom very soon," Arcee assured her, smiling along with the others.

"Hey, look who's up and out!" Bulkhead exclaimed, appearing in the courtyard before anyone even noticed anyone else had come outside. He gave the damaged youngling a big grin, before he nodded 'good mornings' to his teammates along with their daughter, and took a sip from the container of energon in his hand.

"Hello," the tiny green bot said. And she grinned for a second, while she clumsily turned the toy car around in her hand, inspecting its details. Cybershock, as always, looked up at the big Autobot, grinning, excited as ever to see him.

"Bad news from the police early this morning, Bulk'" Arcee said. She got up from the bench and stepped close to him, so that she could speak in hushed tones while the younglings were busy both playing.

"Oh?" Bulkhead looked around a second with an expression of sad concern on his face-plate.

"Ultra Magnus tells me he plans to bring the little one's creator down to the base today so he can see his creation. She's his youngling. He needs to see her, even if he is about to do a lot of time in the city jail for illegal explosives and his latest charge of youngling endangerment."

"But... wouldn't that be a good thing? Her seeing her creator, I mean."

"Well sure. Except he's fighting Ultra Magnus every step of the way on the issue of visiting at all. From what the patrol bots uncovered so far, he's far from a competent or a even loving creator. And now, with his youngling damaged and possibly slightly disabled for life, it seems he might not want her at all. He's one step away from formally abandoning her to the care of the Autobots."

"Sparkless, selfish fragging jerk. Someone outta knock him out. Where's her carrier? So far it doesn't sound like anyone's even heard mention of a carrier at all in this mess."

"Off-line," Arcee said. And she looked back behind her a second at both the damaged youngling and her own, tears threatening quickly as she forced herself to keep on speaking calmly. "Died on a refugee ship days after the youngling was born. The little one never even knew him."

"Poor kid just can't catch a break in life..." Bulkhead muttered, shaking his head. He turned a second to look back at the youngling in question. And she smiled shyly just as soon as he did, which made him laugh a little under his intakes.

"So it seems," Arcee mumbled right back, and now it was her turn to shake her head. She stared at the ground a moment. And slowly she admitted though feelings of defeat, "I'd barely started the process of finding someone who may take her on while her creator serves his time. To think now I might be looking for a permanent home instead... The world is still brand new. Society is still rebuilding and fast. So many bots are carrying now, or raising first frames. I just hope there's still someone out there someone with room in their sparks for one that already exists..."

"Meep... meep!" a little bot cried playfully. And Arcee turned around to look behind her, surprised when she realized quickly that it had been the damaged youngling, and not her own that had made the sound. The little green bot still held the yellow toy car in her one usable hand. And she pushed it slowly in the air, moving the little she could, clearly pretending there was a road beneath it somewhere. Cybershock stood close to her, laughing as she pushed the car she held in her own hand out in front gently, in order to 'cut her off' in 'traffic.'

"You'll find a place for her to go," Bulkhead said, his optics on the tiny green bot as he spoke, still in hushed tones. And he quickly added with confidence, "the hard job'll be choosing one from the stack of applications that come in. Besides, her creator may change his mind..."

"You're right, Bulk," Arcee said, agreeing because it stressed her to think much more on the matter right then, and before she truly needed to. She turned around again, wandered slowly to sit back down on the bench she'd started out on. And Bulkhead followed suit at once, limping a little on the leg she knew he'd hurt that morning while he worked building apartments.

"So," bulk' said, making friendly conversation while he looked now in Knockout's direction. "Ratchet says you've got a new job..."

"Ha. So he told you I turned down administrator, huh?" Knockout answered with a slight anxious laugh."

"Yeah," Bulkhead just shrugged. Then he smiled, nodding. "But he said you've got the position you really wanted."

"Yep," Knockout grinned in reply. The damaged youngling, tired out already just from her short while of lightly playing a little, was clearly falling into recharge, in his lap. And gently, he shifted her weight slightly, obviously trying hard not to let her fall or slide off.

"Daddy, Can I tell him about your new job?" Cybershock asked quickly, and her voice was almost too loud. Arcee cringed a second, glad to see she hadn't disturbed the damaged youngling near her. She yanked lightly on her creator's arm a second then, and it seemed that didn't disturb her either.

"Okay, Cybershock," Knockout smiled, his face-plate proud. "You tell him."

"He's going to be chief medic for the youngling ward!" Cybersock exclaimed. And she hopped up and down a little on the fronts of her feet, as she so liked to do, while she repeated exactly what she'd learned from him that morning.

Arcee chuckled a little under her intakes, watching as her teammate's face-plate turned up just slightly in an expression of surprise at the news. No doubt, she reflected chuckling again, many bots they knew would be shocked – and more so when they learned he only had the job because he'd truly wanted it more than any other.

"Little bot here may just be to thank," Arcee laughed, gesturing with her optics to the green youngling, while she lifted her own child into her lap to hug her again. She looked then toward her mate, still smiling. "He's always loved his tiny patients. But then this one came along and I'm convinced she showed him that they are really where his spark truly lies."

"Yep," Knockout said simply. And he grinned his agreement at once.

"Well, I'm happy for you," Bulkhead said seriously. He got up again from the bench, with some difficulty because of his injured leg. And carefully, so as not to disturb the recharging green youngling, he smacked his teammate's shoulder panel lightly.

* * *

"Your move I do believe, my friend," Ratchet said. His tone was cheerful as he studied the game board, clearly plotting more than one possible future move. He'd just moved three red pieces, and now lowered his hand to the table ending his turn.

Soundwave studied the board himself. He looked for a move he could make without further loss in a game he knew he was losing already. But he could barely focus on it at all. And when he moved his own blue piece, followed quickly by a second one, it still took him a moment to understand he'd only made his own losses worse.

He'd eagerly agreed, when Ratchet had asked him for a game, because ongoing anxiety had plagued him all evening, and some distraction from it seemed a welcome relief. But the game they played - an old Cybertronian game of war strategy, and one they had always both very much enjoyed – took a great deal of focus to play well. And focus that evening was far from Soundwave's strongest asset. He had not played the game in a very long time besides.

"Soundwave!" Ratchet said. He sounded suddenly urgent. And Soundwave shook his head a little, understanding quickly that the old bot had ben speaking to him for several second already and he had not heard a word of it. It was his turn again. Soundwave studied the board just as well as he could, trying to understand where the old medic had moved his own pieces to begin with, because of course he have not even watched him make the moves.

"I am... sorry..." Soundwave muttered, almost under his intakes as he shook his head harder, helpless to figure out even a simple thing like board game manoeuvres.

"You okay?" Firestorm asked him, urgent now herself. She leaned forward on the comfortable rec room sofa she sat on with Laserbeak, close to the table where Ratchet and Soundwave sat playing their game.

"I... am fine..." Soundwave answered, just as quickly as he could manag to speak – though even that was slow and hesitant and he knew it. Laserbeak was up at once, on her feet on Firestrom's shoulder. Her wings flapped with unease, until she finally leap off, flying over to perch instead, on Soundwave.

He felt the concern of the tiny bot at once, through their telepathic connection. She was panicked, because he was. And he slowly sent her calmness though the connection, sitting silently while she sent it right back again. The wing flapping stopped then, and the bird tilted her head, still in her place on his arm, to look into his optics with her own tiny ones. And she flashed concern across the connection now. He dismissed it as quickly as he could, but she only flashed back with annoyance at that. Annoyance at her own feelings so easily dismissed. Soundwave sent his own slight remorse to her then, and quickly he felt her forgiveness, followed quickly but her own uneasy laughter.

"Perhaps tonight is not the best time to play..." Ratchet mused. And his tone was certainly understanding.

"Possibly not," Soundwave found himself admitting slowly. He offered a look of apology, as his own uneasy flared again through his spark. And he leaned back in his chair, sighing hard, before he shook and shuddered for just a moment.

"It's... difficult to believe now that I'll ever be alright again," Soundwave muttered out loud, before hed even meant to. But Firestrom was, aside from Laserbeak of course, the one bot her trusted more than anyone. And Ratchet had never been anything but understanding, and entirely non-judgmental. And indeed, both simply looked on now, their optics patient, and waiting for him to go on speaking.

"I made some progress, since I came here. There were nightmares, yes. Still... I felt like I was... processing. It's always been horrifying, just to wake up morning after morning, screaming... processor in full on panic mode. A need to run, when there is no where to go... Still, through the dreams I faced the memories..."

"You feel like it's all for nothing now?" Ratchet asked, understanding as ever. "Like all that progress you made the horrors of getting there are wasted, because now you've been set back?" Soundwave only nodded mutely. Because the old bot was right entirely.

"You'll get all that progress back, and then some eventually," Ratchet said, assuring. He smiled just a little as he began to pack up the game and pieces. "Of course today it's impossible to believe and I get that completely. But you will be okay again..."

The old medic was interpreted at that second by a great deal of sudden noise and chaos, out in the hallway just outside the rec room where they had been taking. And he held up hand, to excise himself politely, before he stood quickly from his chair and hurried closer to the door, so obviously alarmed. The noise certainly was alarming. There was the sound of heavy stomping footsteps, amid several voices– one of which was very close to shouting.

"I don't think you'll regret going in there once you've gone," Soundwave recognized the voice of the Autobot Arcee, compassionate and calm – though still so clearly flustered in that moment. And Soundwave could easily imagine her biting back her anger at a bot who apparently refused to do exactly what she wanted him to.

Soundwave looked to see Firestrom, still on the sofa and gently patting the empty seat beside her, inviting him to sit down close to her. He stayed where he was instead, not even trying to refuse her offer, as he kept on listening, nervous and uncertain why.

"Keep. Walking." That voice belonged to the police captain, Ultra Magnus – who Soundwave had met only a few times in passing, but certainly respected all the same.

"I don't want to keep walking," a third bot replied. And this one was angry, defiant. "I don't want to be in here. I'll go right back to the cells, but I won't stay here. You push for my creator rights, but you refuse to hear me when I say I don't want them. Are your audio receptors broken? I won't see my youngling, because I don't fragging want her back! Ever! You thought I'd change my mind once I was dragged on in here? I won't!"

"I'll get a temporary surrender form for you to sign then," Arcee's voice, still right outside the door, sounded slightly more understanding now. Though it was clearly simply from her tone of voice along, that she lacked any true compassion or sympathy for the loud voiced bot she was speaking with, regardless. "Sign that for now and think over what you're doing very carefully. There are permanent placement options if you must... Still, see her for just a moment. Please. Whether you love her or not, whether or not you ever wanted her, or you do now or not, to her you're still the bot that made her!"

"No," the loud and angry bot answered firmly. And no one could have doubted for a second that his refusal was final.

Firestrom was quite visibly cringing sadly, at a situation she didn't need details in order to catch a good inkling of. And Soundwave saw her sad, spark broken look, out of the corner of an optic. Silently he was saddened to. But something far more had the better part of his attention. And he sat up straighter in his chair for just second, before he leapt out of it and right to his feet. The voice, yelling and carrying on, making a scene in the corridor... he recognized it at once, although he'd last heard it in the fighting pits of Kaon.

"Soundwave!" Firestorm cried, her panic and alarm obvious just as soon as he'd leapt to his feet. She followed after him, as quickly as she could with her slow and clumsy steps, but he waved her away with a motion of his hand, as he ran toward the door, his sudden fury tearing at his spark.

Ratchet, still standing close to the door and listening, concerned, turned at once and tried to grab him gently by the arm. But Soundwave pulled away quickly, still just aware enough of himself to not harm the medic in his rage, as he stomped right through the door the second it slid open for him.

"Scrapheap!" he growled under his intakes in still growing fury. His red optics, burned dark crimson, and he stared down the dull green brute of a bot, that stood, held by the police captain, in the corridor.

For a second the big bot just looked confused, then shocked and startled. Quickly though a smirk crossed his faceplate and he snarled with fury of his own.

"Well look at that," he mumbled, smirking horribly. "The mute freak lives. And he's... talking."

"Soundwave...?" Firestorm said behind him. And Soundwave heard her small feet as she crept up just as quickly as she could move.

"You're not so pretty now, are you, creepy silent one?" The bit green bot taunted. And Soundwave could only wave Firestrom away, hoping beyond all hope she would listen and go, while the brute went right on taunting. "Back in the pits were were were the pretty one once. That's what the spectators called you... I still remember their cries of shock and horror the day I finally destroyed their 'pretty little fighter'."

Scrapheap was held tightly, by the police-bot who stood behind him. But that didn't stop Soundwave, who rushed toward him in under a second, knocking him to the floor and free from the police-bot's grip, before anyone could even react.

"Great number of bots - offline in the war for Cybertron. Millions," Soundwave raged. His hands went to the neck of the large green bot he'd knocked to the floor. But he didnt press hard, resisting the urge to do exactly that, in favour of simply watching the panic that flashed across his bright blue optics instead. " Young bots with futures assured – gone. Ideas – never heard before they could change the world. Younglings – first frames, second frames – snuffed out before they experienced a true existance. Offline bot - lay miles on battle fields in poolsof their own spilled energon. Reason for the fighting – forgotten long before. Good bots dead. But somehow you survived!"

"Fightin' you again... this takes me back to the good old days..." Scrapheap said, laughing. He stopped laughing at once, the very second Soundwave caught him up tightly in his cables, squeezing him tightly, while his hands pressed him against the floor.

"Sparkless, disgusting excuse for a lifeform," Soundwave growled in the green bot's face-plate, while said bot now gasped and struggled in terror beneath him. He tightened his cables, making the choice not to send any current throuhg then... yet. He liked nervous terror of the bot just waiting to die. "How could you do the things you've done. Your own helpless youngling - dependent on you of anyone, to protect her – nearly blown apart because of your carelessness," Memories flooded Soundwave's processor then, everything he'd ever stored, of his time in the fighting pits. And this time, instead of fighting it off, struggling just to forget again, he welcomed it all, because it only served to fuel his rage.

"You don't know what it is to feel your own armour melted to you frame," he snarled, and aware of beginning to shake again as he did so. But he only wrapped his cables even tighter, determined not to brake, pouring every bit of his rage for past injustice into punishing the bot he was sure he'd come to hate. He was speaking as well as he was only because he focused hard on each word he spoke. Still, it was not exactly perfect. And he was aware, somewhere in the back of his processor, of switching from his formal shorthand, into more informal and back again, all the while making mistakes.

"To feel your own body burning – terror – panic. Pain - feels it may not ever stop. To be so small a youngling, nearly dead like that because your creator is careless... And turn your back on the effects of your own carelessness. I should kill you. Anyone should kill you."

Despite Spundwave's harsh and pointed words, spoken thorough the rage in his voice... despite the cables tightening around his body while heavy hands held firm to his neck; Scrapheap only began to laugh out loud.

"You... you talk like a... first frame."

Soundwave responded to that only by letting go of his neck with one hand only to drive a fist into the smirking green face-plate below him. And when he'd done it once he couldn't stop himself from hitting him again and then again. His remaining hand, still against his neck, pressed harder, and his cables slowly tightened.

"Soundwave!" Firestorm screamed over the sound of bending metal, and the creaking it caused. He realized, with only a slight and passing thought, that she'd been yelling for a while already. Begging him to listen while he fully tuned her out. Laserbeak, perched on her arm, was close to screaming too. "Soundwave, stop. You two clearly have history. I get that. But you're going to kill him!"

"Intention – obviously clear," Soundwave growled, while he hit the green bot again harder than before. He tightened his cables still more and considered sending though a high voltage charge. He laughed just a little to himself when he thought of just how simple it would be to short circuit the bot's worthless processor in seconds.

But two firm hands grabbed him in that very instant. And he was yanked off and away from the big green bot, where he came to land sitting on the floor close by. Soundwave turned then, snapped instantly out of his rage, to find Firestorm behind him, still holding firmly to his upper frame. Firestorm was still so far from strong. Her balance was still bad. And she was little besides. The minibot promptly lost her own sense of balance, in under a second, falling her her knees horribly, after she'd managed, somehow, to yank Soundwave away from big green brutish bot.

"For Primus sake," Ultra Magnus muttered. And with a shake of his head, so clearly meant to break himself out of his own state of shock, he grabbed Soundwave at once, hauling him to his feet, without any resistance.

"Deranged 'con tried to kill me," Scrapheap snarled while Arcee, at his side at once, so clearly only out of duty, checked him over carefully. The big green bot sat hismelf up then on the hallway floor. And he roughly shoved the small Autobot away from him in doing so, and almost made her stumble backwards because of it. Soundwave felf his own rage build again at this. And he struggled a second, his arms held firmly by the police-bot, wanting more than ever to hit the brute again.

"I have no reason to think that anything we just saw has a thing to do directly with faction," Ultra Magnus said, seriously. Soundwave calmed down again slowly. And to his surprise, the police-bot let go of him, allowing him to stand freely, while he looked from one of the two combatants to the other, frowning all the while. His optics landed finally on Soundwave. And his frown turned to a glare. "I'm thinking a good while in lock up might be the just the thing you need to cool off."

"Ultra Magnus, please," Ratchet exclaimed, stepping in at once. He used one hand to quickly usher the police captain into the doorway of the recroom, clearly seeking at least some degree of privacy in which to have a conversation. And he gestured for Soundwave to follow them with the other.

"Soundwave has proven hismelf to be a decent bot. And one who's trying just as hard as I've seen any bot try," the old medic said then, speaking in just above a whispered tone. "It's no secret of course that he's had his share of issues since defecting." he shook his head silently a second, before he sighed, and went right to speaking again. His tone now was far more cautious however. "Listen. I don't claim to know even half the things he's seen and been through in the course of his life. But it's perfectly clear to me that Soundwave is entirely traumatized... just the same as at least thirty more defectors. He was stressed this evening already... on edge, troubled. This bot, Scrapheap, is clearly a bot he's got extremely negative history with. Just hearing his voice... it set Soundwave off."

"That may well be so," Ultra Magnus answered. His frown never left his face-plate, though it was clear in his tone that he certainly understood. "Still, I can't just ignore the fact that Scrapheap could easily have been killed." He stood a second just shaking his head again, before he continued on, almost mumbling now. "If I'd had any idea tonight I'd be dealing with a dispute between two former pit fighters born and raised in kaon... Look, I hate to say it, Ratchet. Because we all know few bots around here have any respect for Scrapheap over what he's done and what he now wants to do next. But still, when it comes to tonight, Soundwave attacked him without provocation."

"Without provocation?" Ratchet shook his own head now, in obvious fustration, as he gestured toward the big green bot, now sitting on the floor, his hands bound firmly in cuffs, by Arcee. "That bot destroyed his face-plate, melted the metal almost beyond repair, and blinded him... all in the name of shocking a crowd of deranged spectators!"

Ultra Magnus appeared for a moment, to consider everything he'd heard. His glare turned back to a frown, and finally the frown turned to a look of clear understanding, even sympathy. He turned again to look at Soundwave, his optics so obviously looking for the place where the other bot's would be, hidden well, beneath his face covering.

"One night in a lock up cell," the police captain declared then, his tone deceive. ""I'll release you tomorrow evening, after we've had a chance to talk a while."

Ratchet stepped forward again, and it was more than clear he was about to say more. But Soundwave only shook his head just slightly, motioning for him with hidden optics, not to. The police-bot's decision was fair. More than fair in fact. And Soundwave knew a far worse punishment could, and quite likely should have, been handed to him for acting on such anger as he had. Firestorm, still a short ways down the hall, hurried over with stumbling steps. And for a moment, he saw the horror and dismay on her face-plate. But Soundwave only nodded to her next, assuring her, with the simple motion, as he held his hands quite willingly behind his back, that he'd be fine.

 **Important note! /**

 **A scene in this chapter, the scene involving Soundwave in the medbay, while Ratchet translates the visuals and audio, he'd brought back... it was inspired greatly by another writer of another fanficion. The story is 'Redeem the Stars' by a writer named Megadoomingir, and is a very cool story, which follows Starscream after the end of the war for Cybertron. There's a plot point in there which my scene mirrors perhaps a little too closely. I dont want to give away their plot, because of anyone who might be reading that story at the same time as mine, obviously. But know that I am taking inspiration, because I honestly LOVED the concept Megadoomingir presented. It was such an interesting take on things.**

 **(And another note of less importance) I do realize this story now has a few still barely unfolding but still obvious subplots. I hope they still make sense. Each of them are leading to an end and will be important. I'm still confidant in my balancing of subplots, even if it looks, (even to me at times, I must admit) like all I'm making is a mess here.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes/ This chapter was another one that I had trouble writing. Nothing wrong with it really (at least I sure hope not!) I just felt like I had trouble getting it 'right.' Trying to get the words typed on a screen to match the way things were already put together in my own head. I finally made up my mind that its ready to be posted, because though I'm not completely happy with it, I know I never will be entirely.**

"Speedy," Bumblebee said slowly, his optics intently on his bondmate, and his concern growing quickly. "Please talk to me a second. How are you doing?"

"It's already different this time," Speedbreaker answered. She'd been almost entirely for some time, while she lay still on the recharge station she'd been placed on, just staring at the wall across the room. But her optics went slowly back to her mate, when he talked to her. And as she went on speaking back, her voice began to tremble just a little with her growing nervousness. "We're only a couple hours in, and already it's getting so... bad."

"That's unfortunately so often the case in forced separations," 'Bee said, understanding - or at least trying his best to be. "Wanna sit up for a bit? Changing your position might well be helpful."

"In... in a minute," Speedy replied, nervously. She fell silent again for a long moment and just rang her hands together with growing anxiety. "'Bee... could you... could you please scan the newsparks again?"

"Okay," 'Bee answered, and he reached at once for the med-scanner he'd left sitting close by on a work table behind him. The newsparks did need frequent scanning now – even if not quite so frequent as this. Still, it did no harm at all to scan them, and he knew well that she would not possibly settle unless she could see constant updates on the scanner screen.

"They seem no better at all," Speedy mumbled, still trembling just a little. "Their spins have not improved..."

"And they likely won't" Bumblebee said, still calm because he refused to let himself along with her. Instead he smiled at her with optics full of assurance. "That's why we've just got to get them born, hey."

Their worrying situation had come to light suddenly, sometime just before the middle of the night. Speedy had woken out of nowhere at all, sitting up on the recharge station she shared with her mate, insisting in growing panic and unease that something was wrong. Because in her mind, though she couldn't understand what it was that let her sense it, something was. Some scrambling for a youngling sitter and a drive through the dark of night toward the medbay, later – and they'd learned from Ratchet, to their great shock and horror, that she had been right

One tiny spark had stopped it's spin completely, and though its light flared bright as ever on the screen, showing it was still both alive and perhaps even content, its state would certainly not stay an ideal one for long. The motionless spark, was of course also a twin. And that it seemed was both good and bad at present, because the second tiny spark, had begun to drag it around forcefully, in it's own spinning motion. Good - the new creators understood from Ratchet - because it kept it moving and gave it needed time that way. Bad however – they understood just as well – because by now the second spark was slowing down rapidly in its own spin from the added drag of towing its own sibling, possibly all through the night.

"You think they'll always take care of each other?" Speedy questioned. And she looked up at her mate, with hope in her optics – hope inspired by just seeing them both still completely alive. "Just like one looks so determined to care care of the other one now?"

"I sure like to think so." Bumblebee laughed a little, grinning, while he propped the head up the recharge station up a ways, letting his mate sit up on it easily while she leaned back on her pillow. "Both of them and Hotwire of course. Three little peas in a pod!"

"What?" Speedbreaker looked at his half sideways, with a baffled expression.

"An Earth expression, Speedy."

"Well it sounds quite perfectly silly."

"It is quite silly I suppose. Can you sense anything from them?" Bumblebee gently placed his hand against Speedbreaker's spark chamber, which despite her growing discomfort, was still fully enclosed behind well sealed panels. She sighed in relief from the coolness of his hand, and so he left it there for longer.

"I do sense them..." Speedy said. And she smiled a little, focusing her attention on the already well forming connection to her children. "They are... calm... happy and ready to be here with us. I don't think they have any idea there's anything the slightest bit concerning about what they've managed to do... 'Bee, do you think we're ready for this?" She smiled for a second more, before an energy purse shot across the front of her frame, causing her to gasp a little, before she caught her intakes again quickly. "Three younglings instead of just one very soon."

"I think we certainly are." 'Bee replied, smiling again. "You still set on calling them Hubcap and Sparkplug then?"

"I think so. We wanted their names to match, and we did both like those best it seems..." Speedbreaker stopped speaking again, and just sat up for a moment on the recharge station, looking across the small room at the two small very close to identical youngling frames that lay on a repair table. Each one was coated in its final coating of thick protectant oil. And though the frames were still of course lifeless – no more than well built complex constructions of metal and – they had been layed neatly side by side and close together, one tiny hand from each tiny frame rested quite adorably over the chest panel of the other.

A pain worse than any one of them yet coursed through Speedy's upper frame, and she gasped hard, fighting against it for a second before she remembered from her previous experience with Hotwire, that that would only make it worse instead of better. And she did the best she could to calm herself, until it had passed, a short moment later.

"You think they will like them?" She asked her mate quietly, looking again at the tiny youngling frames, and letting herself smile again

She watched him nod a little in reply. And she saw him smile back as he did so. But he was distracted, intently thinking other thoughts. She could tell so clearly in less than a second.

"'Bee?" she asked him gently. And her hand reached for his, seeking his attention. "What are you thinking about?"

"The same kind of things I thought about when Hotwire was born," Bumblebee said. And he smiled, before he moved a little, to shake off his musing.

"How much Opimus Prime would surely have loved to know these little ones of ours?" Speedbreaker understood at once. And 'Bee nodded.

"This is what his sacrifice was all about, Speedy. The future. The baby younglings that are arriving all the time now. He did what he set out to do. He always did, because failing was never an option to him."

"I wish I could have met him..."

"I wish you could have met him too. He may never have said it... he was usually a bot of few words... but he would have loved you, just like he loved any of us."

"The refugees are far from ungrateful..." Speedbreaker smiled again.

"I think he always knew that too," Bumblebee answered, smiling back.

Speedbreaker nodded at that. And she was about to say something more about it. But another pain hit in that second. And this time it was worse even than the one before it. She let a tiny cry of despair escape, before she clamped her hand tightly against her mouth, determined to be quiet.

"Getting worse?" 'Bee questioned slowly, patiently.

"Yeah," Speedy nodded as the pain passed again. By now though a steady ache remained across the centre of her chest panel. And already it felt like it was spreading outwards just a little in every direction.

"You're still feeling okay sitting up like that?"

"Y... yeah. Being up like this is better than... than laying flat."

"Speedy," Bumblebee questioned slowly. His voice was hesitant, the tone of a bot who knew well to approach the subject he was about to, with care and caution. "I know you said right from the start you were saying no to pain medication... but..."

"I'm still refusing, 'Bee," Speedbreaker said at once. Her tone was firm. And despite her discomfort, she still managed to shake her head just a little and laugh give a tiny laugh. "Of course this is bad. Yeah, I'm already in pain. But I can function just fine!"

"It's going to get worse," 'Bee reminded her, still carefully. He squeezed the hand that still held his for a moment and said, with understanding, "No one will make you agree to anything you don't want. And of course I know you're far from asking for it now regardless. Just know that if you change your mind later, that's okay too."

"No," Speedbreaker said, just as firmly as before. And when the next pain moved across her her front panelling, she stared at her mate's optics, determined and gasping for a second, before she continued speaking just as soon as it had passed. "'Bee, no. I don't want this time to be just like it was when Hotwire was born. I was so sleepy... I barely remember even holding him..."

"It's different with these two newsparks," Bumblebee answered, smiling assurance "We have more time..."

Hotwire's seperation had been little more than utter chaos, with Speedy arriving in the medbay with only two hours to spare. And because of the timing, and with the young bot in so much pain she was nearly complete panic, Ratchet had had no choice but to use a medication not ideally suited to spark separations. Yes, it had done it's job, and eased her pain by a great deal. But it had also served as a slow acting much stronger than anyone would have wanted or needed in such a situation. Speedy's optics had been had been barely open by the time the tiny youngling was delivered. And she was barely conscious only seconds later, to see him newly in his frame. She'd asked what culr he was, thouhg his yellow paint was boldly obvious in another second or two. And she'd been close to dropping him twice, unable to hold onto him when he was handed to her crying.

"I still want to try hard not to change my mind," Speedbreaker said frimly. And she paused a moment, her familiar concern reappearing on her face-plate. "'Bee... scan the newsparks again?"

"Okay."

"Let me see that scan for a second," Ratchet said, the second he'd walked into the room, let the door close behind him and watched his young student finish with the scanner.

"Are they... still okay," Speedbreaker asked urgent as ever, while she gasped and groaned horrible through another energy burst. As soon as she'd finished speaking, she covered her face-plate with both of her hands, and barely managed to muffle much louder groans of pain in doing so.

"They're still fine," Ratchet answered, nodding with a smile on his face-plate. He turned the scanner to show her the saved still image on he little screen, as well as the various readings that showed below it. "It may seem a bit surprising, but the stationary newspark is still doing perfectly well. You see that good strong spark pulse? It's the one that's pulling it along for the ride in it's own rotation, I'm just slightly more worried about. That one's pulse has slowed a little more. But..." The old bot held a hand up, interrupting the pair of young creators before either one of the could panic. "Even so, it's still not enough to be close to concerning yet."

"How could this have happened?" Speedy questioned. The worry in her optics mixed in that second with a look of pain as the next energy pulse spread across the front of her upper frame. And her hands held tightly into the rail beside the recharge station for a moment, while she waited for the pain to pass again. "How can... one of them just stop spinning like that?" Her optics travelled from the old medic to her mate and back again. "We... we did everything right. We have no problems at all, this whole time..."

"You did do everything right," Ratchet said slowly. He smiled again with assurance. He placed a hand on 'Bee's shoulder panel, and the other one on Speedbreaker's. "This wasn't your fault. Either of you. It's just a random thing... like so many others. Now if you were much earlier on in carrying when this happened, it would be a much bigger problem, as you can imagine. The risk would be so very high... I'd take measures to try to get it spinning again on its own... But with them ready to be born any time now, I still see no reason at all to panic and worry. And you shouldn't either. The stress they'll sense though their connection to your spark will be the thing that's truly bad for them."

"Ratchet's right..." 'Bee said thoughtfully. And he smiled at his mate, who returned his little smile at once, while she rested, awaiting and dreading the next energy pulse.

"I know I'm right!" the old bot chuckled, with a shake of his head and a decent huff under his intakes. He turned then to look in this young student's direction. "Now, how would you feel, 'Bee, about the first newsparks you ever get to help deliver being your own younglings by tonight?"

"I... I don't know..." Bumblebee stammered, nervous as he always was when presented with his next new task in his training. "I don't think I..."

"I trust you, Bee," Speedbreaker said, resting new in the decent length of time between her bursts of pain. She smiled then. "And wouldn't it be so amazing to tell the twins one day they were your first newspark deliveries in medical school!"

"Why don't you walk for a while," Ratchet suggested. "Walking tends to help a lot, at least before you get too far into spark separation. And I'll find a holovid player for you to borrow too, if you've like to sit and watch something."

"How could I possibly focus on a holovid?" Speedbreaker said with dismay. A new slightly sharper pain flared across her upper frame for a moment, and she knew her focus on watching something on the vidscreen might just be enough to halfway distract her from that. But nothing would ever be enough to distract her from her stress and worry for the newsparks she carried.

"Take a good walk, you two," Ratchet said, clapping each of the bonded pair lightly on their backs, and smiling, not unkindly at all. "I've got a disk some good old pre-war comedy in mind to let you watch when you get back. A good laugh will do you and those newsparks good." he helped Speedy, as she slowly got up to standing. And for a moment, he watched her as she just held the edge of the recharge station though another energy pulse, her knees bent and her body leaning forward.

* * *

 _Soundwave crashed onto his knees on the metal ground somewhere. And for a moment he just stayed there, sprawled terribly across the filthy metal, laying where he'd fallen, before he forced himself to move again. He sat himself up slowly, and everything around him began to spin horribly as he did. Pain, worse than any he'd ever felt before, tore though his body, and his vision turned to bright white, as he moved again, stumbling to get back onto his feet. He screamed a moment, the noise of that echoing off the metal below him and back into his audio receptors, before the pain made him purge violently over the ground. He stumbled again before he could stand, and he fell hard, with a clang of metal against metal._

 _This was bad. He knew that in an instant as he forced himself to think and reason. He hands went to his face-plate then, determined to assess the damage. And the heat that radiated from it forced him to pull his hands away before his fingers burned._

 _A crowd of spectators still gasped and shrieked, still screamed and murmured, inside the area close by. There was laughter as well, and cheers and reactions of excitement, from deranged bots clearly convinced that something was funny. But over all, the reaction of the crowd - one used to energon shed and witnessing pain - was horror and disgust and what had just happened._

 _He was a fair ways away from the area now. He could tell by the sounds of the noises within. And he knew that in the frantic panic that had caused him to run aimlessly forward, he'd run well outside of the area complex. He'd surely be in trouble for that move. To run from the place on a tournament night, that was a violation of a top tear rule, and punishable in a worse case by execution before the spark-less crowd. It didn't matter, he thought, horrified and with a dropping spark, as the pain only grew worse as his processor caught up to his body. The critical damage warnings that flashed across his vision, made it perfectly clear in an instant that he was already off-lining._

 _The spinning had stopped now, but the view through his optics was dim and wavering. He was near the side of the main street, running through the centre of the city. He recognized the high wall of cobalt behind him, surrounding the area complex, and the run down red painted apartment building on the other side of the road. But the colours were wrong. The wall was dusty green... the building was a strange clouded sort of blue. And anything he knew should have existed inside his peripheral vision, was gone almost entirely, leaving only a sense hazes of grey and muted yellow tones. The road, u sally busy with the traffic of bots rushed passed in vehicle modes, was all but deserted now, with a large portion of the entire city population inside the area of watch the fighting matches. And those bots were out and about their business only drove on by him, just as though they hadn't even noticed someone dying at the side of a roadway._

 _The public wash-house – built perhaps a century before, to discourage the endless stream of derelicts and drunken riffraff of Kaon, from empty overflow tanks and stinking with their coatings of filth and dust, in the streets – was next to that once red tenement, tucked away at the bottom of a stairwell, between the building and the dive bar beside it. And Soundwave knew it would likely be empty, if not close to it that night, because even the worst of the no good attended the area's tournaments, and that night's was the largest of the season. He knew well he needed to get down there. And as the world appeared again to spin around him, and new more urgent warnings flashed across his vision, he managed to get himself painfully to his feet. The world went white again, and he thoguth he would fall. But instead he managed five stumbling stepped, and then six more, refusing to let himself fall in the middle of the road he was struggling to cross, sure if it did so, any bot that came access him may sooner drive right over him, sooner than go around._

 _Stabbing pains tore though his lower right leg with each of his stumbling steps, and spilled energon, in the shape of his left foot print stained the road behind him. More pain tore across his lower mid section, where he knew a blow well meant to knock him backwards in the fighting ring, had badly cracked his metal. But the worst of it all was his face-plate, which burned with a kind of pain he lacked the words to even describe. And he raised his hand to it again, as he stumbled forward, the world spinning once more. And still his hand nearly burned from the heat. Soundwave screamed out loud again, catching himself before he fell, refusing to let himself stumble. And he crashed lightly against the front of some bot's immaculate vehicle mode. The bot- dull blue one, who given the state of Soundwave's vision might well have actually been shiny red, only veered away from him at once, before he screamed insults from somewhere inside his well folded form. Soundwave he knew, had been well identified as a pit fighter by that bot. And to him, like most, his status was lower even that that of the derelicts that dirtied up the streets._

 _Soundwave's colour vision faded abruptly to varying grey tones and a few hints of muted pastels, by the time he'd managed somehow to stumble down the steep and dangerous, slippery steps. And anything to either side of centre as well as up and down, was all but gone entirely. But he managed anyway to stumble to some taps and faucets that lined the far wall of a filthy unkempt wash house. The floor, the wall in front of him, and even the taps themselves were coated in oil and grime. But at least that night, there was running water. Soundwave, his hands trembling along with the rest of his body by then from impending systems shock, let the water run cool for just a second before he splashed it hopelessly over his face-plate. If his level of pain had been horrific before, that very quickly made it so much worse. The sound of steady and terrible shrieks filled the empty room for several long seconds before he realized that he was making such a sound himself. Still, he forced himself to keep on splashing water over his face plate while he sat on the dirty floor in front of it. And finally, unable to do anything else at all, he leaned half laying sprawled over the floor, and against the cold wall._

 _'You,' a small voice demanded urgently then. And his his confusion, he thought he could hear a strange beating of small wings somewhere near the low ceiling. 'Don't you even think of letting yourself power down. If you do that now, there's little chance you'll ever wake up! You can survive. You need to think smart."_

 _"Who are you?" Soundwave demanded right back. That simple sentance, those three tiny words, were almost impossible to form in any real order, and the sound of his own voice echoed through his head, making everything that hurt, some how hurt worse._

 _The voice he'd heard – it was somehow strangely tiny, and feminine... and it appeared, he realized with a wave to fight, to speak in his head instead of out loud at all. A figure flew around a second, flapping close to the warped ceiling, and a flickering light, before it dropped to land, perching on the water faucet close to his head. Soundwave's vision was worse then before. But he looked, the best he could through failing optics to see that – no... she – was a tiny grayish black bot in the shape of a nearly primitive bird._

 _'I am... Laserbeak,' the bird said, again projecting her voice into Soundwave's head instead of making a noise. And in spite of it all, the pain and terror, the despair and the urgency that surrounded the moment, Soundwave laughed inwardly just a little, to realize she had only then decided she would name herself._

 _'You are called Soundwave,' the tiny telepathic bird said. And for someone so tiny she certainly was confidant in the tone of her voice. 'No need for introductions. I know all about you. Call me an admirer. I've watched you for a while." The tiny creature hopped gently down from the faucet and landed easily on Soundwave's chest penal, where she flattened herself out a bit and lay still a moment again him, sending a strange feeling of calmness and comfort the very best she clearly could through the same newly forming link that let him hear her voice. Soundwave raised a hand, the greatest possible amount of movement his own body would even allow by now, in order to rub it gently over the tips of her small wings, in thanks._

 _'I am... sorry I could not save you from this,' the tiny flying bot said, sitting upright again a second later on Soundwave's chest panel, before she jumped off again, perching herself back on the faucet. 'Are you carrying any supplies? Something we could use...'_

 _Every fighter in the pits, was supplied with a simple stock of basic first aid supplies – a small mercy on part of the overseers, allowing them to patch themselves up should they survive their matches. The branch of the government that ran the place for the continued entertainment of their public, had learned, it seemed many years before, that the whole practice was so much more efficient if the fighters were spared from death in great numbers by simple injuries, by simply being provided with their own first aid kits Soundwave remembered his own supplies, stored inside his storage compartment. And he let said compartment pop open at once, before he struggled with weak and shaking hands to retrieve them. It wasn't much – not when it came to injuries as devastating as he knew his were – but still the best he could do._

 _'You need to get to a medical centre somehow,' Laserbeak reasoned, quite wisely. But Soundwave only shook his head a little. He stopped in a second because the motion of that brought him close to screaming again from pain._

 _"No. No, I cannot." He wished he could explain that the overseers of the fighting pit would only deem him worthless now for his so obviously devastating damage. And instead of any attempt at repairing him, he would only be ordered offline as worthless. But he couldn't make himself begin to form the words, and he quickly understood that he didn't have to try because the tiny bot understood him without a word at all, just as he did her. And she was not happy. He senced her hesitation clearly. But just as clearly he quickly he sensed her reluctant agreement She knew well that he was right._

 _Laserbeak moved again, hopping down fron the faucet and onto the floor, so that she could rummage, using her small beak and for forward tilted head, through the simply supplies that Soundwave had dropped, helplessly, onto the wash-house floor. In that same strange manner, she picked up a rag, fly it back to the still running tap, and let it dropped under the small stream of water. Soundwave watched her, as she picked it up again, now soaking wet, a second later. And with his worsening state of shock effecting his processor in ways he may not have liked had he only still been in his right mind, he almost laughed at just how silly she looked to him in doing that. The tiny flying bot dropped the rag again over his face-plate – so clearly the most pressing of his many injuries by far. And for what might have been minutes, he only screamed nonsensically, because his own mind and body would allow him to do nothing else. The tiny bot just let him it seemed. And for another second or two she pressed herself against him, sending the very same comfort and calm as before though the still growing connection._

 _"Vision – worsening," Soundwave said, well aware of mumbling far more than any real speaking. And he pulled the cloth away from his optics, only to realize just how bad the state of his optics had become by now. "Laserbeak... I can hardly see you. I can see barely more than light."_

 _'Even without vision', the bird mused back to him, still in his mind, 'you might likely still have your life.'_

Soundwave snapped awake suddenly, and to the sound of a metal fist banging lightly on the bars of his cell door. He remembered at once, where he was, realized he was indeed sure enough locked up in a cell. And he fought back a momentary groan of displeasure as he sat up on the thinly padded bench he'd been laying on to recharge. His spark sunk a second with his embarrassment, when he realized he'd recharged somehow well into mid morning.

His back ached with protest as he hauled himself immediately to his feet. And he stood still for a second or two, shaking off the most intense flashback he'd suffered through yet, staring through the bars at Ultra Magnus, who stood on the outside, looking in, with a container of fuel in his hand.

"May I enter?" the police captained questoned. And Soundwave nodded once in reply, before he thought to wonder if it had really been truly a matter of his choice at all whether to let him inside the cell or not. Ultra Magnus stepped inside the cell, after he;d unlocked it asily with a key card, he quickly placed back into his storage compartment. And just as soon as he'd done that, he offered out the fuel container, which Soundwave reached for hesitantly

There was a small, simply and rickety folding chair in the couner of the small cell, opposite the recharging bench. And the large police-bot sat down on it, his hands coming to rest comfortably on his folding knees.

"Please," he murmured, almost politely after a second, as he gestured to the bench, indicating his wish that Soundwave sit back down again himself. Soundwave hesitantly complied.

Flashback in recharge?" The police-bot questioned then. And Soundwave surprised himself by nodding slowly in confirmation.

"Bad one?"

Again, Soundwave nodded once. And to his far greater surprise, Ultra Magnus, responding with a look of understanding. he reached out a hand too. But it never once touched Soundwave's armour - stopping instead to hover a short ways above his shoulder panel.

"You're sure not alone," the police-bot said. And his optics showed a surprising kindness as he spoke. "I still get 'em at least twice a week. It;s still hard sometimes to remember they can't hurt us now."

"I... wish to thank you," Soundwave said. His words were slow as he tried hard as ever to form each one of them in a way that would have made any real sense at all. "For your choice not to lock Laserbeak in here along with me."

"Well..." the police-bot chuckled again, a genuine laugh as he smiled assurance. "Laserbeak didn't do anything wrong. She was inside the recreation room minding her own business it seems, perched on a lightshade while you took it upon yourself to attack that bot out in the hallway. I can't exactly punish her for something you did on your own. That's not the Autobot way of handling things."

Soundwave only nodded his grateful understanding, seeing his logic in keeping the bird free, while he took an equally grateful sip from the container of energon. Realizing quickly that he was still in great need of it, his energy still depleted and explaining his over-recharging, he took another sip at once. The energon in he container tasted strange to him. And he frowned slightly in confusion at the unfamiliar flavor of it. Still, it did not taste bad exactly, just different. And he took another, not slower sip, trying with no success at all, to identify the flavor.

"I mixed in a little magnesium and cobalt in with your fuel," Ultra Magnus explained, with another slight chuckle, because he'd surely noticed Soundwave's confusion over it. "It's generally agreed that that's a decent flavor combination. Besides, both metals are good for you. Wonderful, they say, for keeping yours fiber optics strong, as well as keeping rust at bay..."

Soundwave knew well that most bot's enjoyed flavors, some of them quite regularly, mixed into their energon. And strangely, it seemed a social trend was forming around the like of such a thing in the mornings, for whatever reason. The flavors came, sold in packets, easily available all over the city by now, and many bot's kept their own small assorted stashes of them beside their energon dispensers to use when they felt like adding metal flavors. Firestorm regularly brought her preferred iron and copper ones home with her from the sweet shop. And they were found frequently in a little blue dish by Soundwave small dispenser in his living space. But Soundwave had never before have any flavoured fuel. Never in his life before had it ever been available to him, and he'd never developed any desire to try it now, simply because others enjoyed it. Slowly drinking another sip of the flavoured morning fuel though, he admitted to himself that he could understand its popularity.

"That small bird of yours will be okay on her own a while?" Ultra Magnus inquired. Soundwave nodded at once, his confidence growing.

"Firestorm will care for her."

"That little Firestorm is really something else," the police-bot laughed again just a little, then ssat a second shaking his head in clear dismay. "I've never known a mini-bot femme before that's bold enough to step into a scrap between two raging ex-pit fighters, regardless of her reasons it. I'm not saying it was good idea. Anyone with any good sense knows it certainly was not. Still, she may well be a keeper."

"The greatest of my fears now – that one day I will wake from my recharge to find that my defection, and everything past that point, was a wonderful dream instead of anything real," Soundwave mused slowly out loud. He did not know the police-bot well at all. But somehow he felt a need to trust him, as he explained the strangest of his thoughts to this virtual stranger. "That I'll wake up early one morning on the warship with the endless war still dragging on and my faction still determined to wage it. That I'd only dreamed of peace and and of rebuilding the world. That'd I'd only dreamed that I could see again just like anyone else and that, I would fly for the simple joy of it. And so much worse than anything else – that I had only dreamed Firestorm... made her real in my mind and dreamed that I loved her, and I felt her love for me... but she was never real."

"You're not the only bot to fear sometimes that none of this new world is real," Ultra Magnus said. And the tone of his voice said that, shockingly, he related entirely. The captain of the police force fell silent then. And for a long moment, he just sat in his chair, leaning forward with his hands resting on his knees, and appeared to think intently.

"Ratchet came to speak to me last night," he continued. His voice was calm and still understanding, but serious too. "I found him waiting in front of my office, when I got back from locking you up. He told me everything he'd learned from you yesterday in his medbay. He assured me you knew already that he wanted to come forward..."

Soundwave only nodded mutely, as anxiety and threatening panic rose up through his frame. He rememered then that his optics were fully visible – he'd taken his face-shield off so that he could drink from his fuel container. And in that moment he felt ten times more uneasy in seconds, at knowing full well that his concern showed this time, in the midst of any interaction with another bot. He though perhaps he should put the cover back on. It lay right where's he lightly tossed it down, close to his hand on the padded bench. But it was too late for that now and he knew it. Inwardly he wondered in dismay at how he'd possibly forgotten all about it in the first place.

"I won't judge you immediately for your decision to return to Megatron," Ultra Magnus said. And to Soundwave's amazement there was still not a hint of anger in the tone of his voice. "I do however wish to know why..." the police captain sat up straighter, hands still on his knees, inviting open conversation.

"I... I don't know," Soundwave mumbled in answer. And all at once, he was instantly dismayed and disappointed with himself, becasue even in the worst of his lifelong troubles with verbal communication, he had never once been known to mumble his answers under any circumstances. "I hated him for a century... for years I wished him dead because that might have saved us all from an unending and pointless war... Still, when he called my commlink, I couldn't make myself refuse his demands..."

"You were conditioned to servitude for an impossibly long time," Ultra Magnus replied, thoughtful. And still his voice and expression showed no hint of judgment or anger. "I don't know much about your life story, and I won't claim to for a second. But it doesn't take a genius to understand you were raised to be a slave. When a bot grows into adulthood hearing that's all he can ever be, I fear all too often the prophecy is pretty self fulfilling."

"I fear Megatron will become a danger again," Soundwave said, volunteering the information he could easily guess the police-bot wanted, before he was asked for it. "This time his motivation is unusually well intentioned ... if not twisted and confused. But it stands to reason, he will target the rest of his troops who had since defected. And those now number near a hundred."

"I will assume you will willingly work with the police to settle this matter before anyone else is hurt," Ultra Magnus ventured. His tone was hopeful, serious and expectant. And without thinking twice about it, Soundwave nodded.

"Thank you," the police captain said, with a hint of a smile appearing again on his face-plate.

"I... want to be an Autobot," Soundwave blurted. Because though it must have seemed out of nowhere and completely unrelated to anything currently being discussed, he felt moved to say it then regardless.

"Soundwave," Ultra Magnus answered still slowly. And to Soundwave's surprise and dismay, he chuckled a little under his intakes again, as he did so. "The war is over. There are no formal factions anymore. Whether your status is Autobot or neutral, it hardly makes a bit of difference."

Soundwave knew of course that the police-bot was right. But his speak was suddenly heavy with a regret he didn't fully understand. He felt a tiny coolant tear forming in the corners of each of his optics, and he blinked them both away quickly, taking an intake of air and forcing back his feelings as he was so used to doing.

"It... does to me," he said, unable to stop the trembling of his voice as hard as he tried.

* * *

"I don't wanna do this anymore," Speedbreaker mumbled horribly. Tears fell from her optics, and her body screamed it's desire to move, to seek comfort by rolling to one side or the other. But she lacked any strength to do even that.

"I know," Bumblebee answered calmly, understanding. "We're so close now."

"How much longer?" Speedy asked, just barely managing to speak at all, between one strong pulse of energy that tore through the front of her frame and nearly clear around to the back of it, and the one that followed in under a second.

"I can't say exactly," Ratchet, standing close by with his trusty old scanner in hand, answered with a hint of a smile. "You know it's not nearly an exact science. But... if you keep going as you are, I'm going to guess an hour, maybe two."

"You see" 'Bee said, smiling even as he mate grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard enough that it caused him some degree of pain. "You're almost there."

"Oww..." Speedbreaker groaned under weak and shaky intakes. Her coolant tears kept falling, and her body shook hard from the physical stress of her relenting pain. "Oww... owwww... please, help me!"

Speedbreaker's panel was well over half way to open by now and the readings at last scan showed near full separation of both tiny newsparks from her own. Indeed, it appeared by then that each was attached to their carrier's spark by only thin threads of energetic matter, and those connections were steadily pulling apart.

"Help me! Help me!" Speedy screamed, instinctive panic threatening to overtake her just as it had done years before close to the arrival of her first youngling.

"You're okay," 'Bee said slowly. He smiled a little, but his smile was shaky with his own growing anxiety. "All three of you are still just fine.

"Okay... okay," Speedbreaker mumbled, gasping through her pain, and trying hard just to assure herself. Another hard pulse of energy come right on the heels of the last two of them, and she screamed loudly, because she couldn't stop herself from doing so.

"I... I can do this. I can do this..." she mumbled when the pain passed again. And she rested for just a second, staring into her mate's wide open optics, with her own filling with more coolant tears. As the next burst of pain began to build quickly somewhere within her spark chamber she blinked back still more tears and begged helplessly, "'Bee, p... please tell me I can do this!"

"You can," Bumblebee answered quickly. "You definitely can. Look how far you've gotten already... You're so amazing, and beautiful and unstoppable..."

"No I'm not," Speedbreaker said back. And the tone of her voice might have under so many other circumstances been almost funny. "I'm just a big mess..."

"You're my mess" 'Bee answered back quickly, just wishing he could make her laugh even a little, though he knew he would fail.

"I'm going to up your pain medication just a little bit," Ratchet said, stepping closer to the pair again, after he'd spent a moment digging through a drawer across the small room.

"No! No!" Speedy cried in alarm. Her hand held her bondmate's as tightly as ever, and she shook her head forcefully, with her optics staring at the old medic in determination. It had been a challange just to convince her to agree to any medication at all – though she finally had after five refusals, because she had by then been close to outright herself with pain. Now, quite as anyone had predicted, she fought hard against the need for anymore. "I can do this! I can, I can!"

"I don't doubt you can," the old bot answered. He smiled at her again with assurance, and rested a hand for a second on her shoulder panel gently. "But you're in far more pain than you need to be. Why do this to yourself? The medication you're on is different this time remember? See? You're still nice and alert. Fully conscious. And I'm just upping it a little."

For a moment after that, Speedy only shook her head again, even as greater pain than ever tore through her upper body – and this time it radiated, it seemed, also clear to her shoulders and down her arms, sending violent jolts of spark energy through her wiring, until her body stiffened painfully. As it passed she slowly nodded her head just a little, and gave a cry of despair as she reluctantly agreed.

"Hellooo," Arcee's voice called out from the door. And all three of the bots inside the room realized only then that the door had slid open at all. Bumblebee waved her in quickly with the one hand his mate wasn't still violently squeezing.

"Knockout comm'd me from work with an update," Arcee explained quietly. Her hand came to rest on 'Bee's shoulder panel, and she gestured toward Speedy with her optics, sympathetically. "He said it was pretty bad when he peeked in on her awhile ago. I hurried over just as soon as I could."

"Arcee..." Speedbreaker mumbled. Her optics met those of her friend. And the tears she'd managed managed to fight back, began to fall again. "I... wish I was strong like you..."

"It's okay. It's okay," Arcee said gently. And she smiled assurance just like the others had been doing all day. When Speedbreaker's free hand grabbed one of hers, she simply let her, still smiling a little.

"You will... stay here?" Speedy questioned, hopefully. And Arcee nodded at once.

"Of course I can, if you want me to. Firestorm has Cybershock along with Hotwire now..."

"Speedbreaker," Ratchet said, interrupting the silence they had all fallen into for a short while. He'd scanned her without her even appearing to notice it, and quickly he moved to set the scanner down on his worktable close to the recharge station, before he opened a kit filled with needed supplies he'd left close to it. "We've got two lovely little newsparks all ready to come on out."

Speedy knew at hearing his words though her haze of pain – still very present though made far less by the medication – that she should felt relief at his words. And she certainly did to some great extent. But there was more than that. Right along with her relief, a strong and pressing fear flowed through her at once.

"No reason at all to be scared," Ratchet said, understanding her emotions simply by looking at the expression on her face-plate. He took several hurried steps across the room, grabbed hold of the repair table containing the pair of newly finished youngling frames, and pulled it closer as he returned again to the side of the recharge station. "Now, we are going to do all the work here, and you're going to lay still and intake for me, okay."

"Mmmhmm," Speedy mumbled still shaking a little, as she made herself let go of her mate's hand.

Arcee hurried around to stand at the top of the recharge station. And she held one of her younger friend's hands in hers, not surprised at all when Speedy squeezed again hard as she could, while her other hand grabbed immediately onto the edge of the recharge station.

Bumblebee stood close to his bondmate, startled from his own racing thoughts and nearly jumping from the floor when Ratchet put a medical tool into his hands, instructing him at the same time to slide open the spark casings of both youngling frames beside him. Shakily he did so, struggling all the while not to drop the tool onto the floor.

"'Bee, you see both of the newsparks clearly?" the old medic asked, fully in 'teacher mode' now. The young Autobot nodded. And again he almost dropped the tool because of his shakiness and nerves.

He could indeed see then when he peered in, optics focusing well on the centre of his bondmate's fully open spark chamber. He identified Speedy's own spark easily of course – bright bluish white and pulsing steadily. And around close to hers he saw both of their children. Instead of moving independent of each other, as twin sparks should have, they stayed close together - one rotating far too slowly around the bluish spark of their carrier in a close wise motion, while the other followed behind it, pulled along by a thin string of energy that had formed between then. It looked unnatural, and 'Bee known that indeed it was. But both tiny sparks still pulsed bright and bluish white just like their creator's.

"We want to grab the one that's trailing behind first," Ratchet explained, still calm as ever. "The energetic band between then should snap on its own. If not. we just gently cut the string. When we've got the newspark, we turn and release it quickly into a frame and go back for the other, ideally in seconds." The old bot paused a second then, looking over the tiny sparks for a second himself, before he continued seriously. "Neither one is in any distress. They both look even better than I thought they might look up close. Still, when we get them into frames it might take a bit for either to come online or cry. They are both a bit weak from the condition they've gotten themselves into."

"Ratchet... I don't think I can..." 'Bee stammered, his nervously growing to the point of discomfort, and his shakiness making it harder still to keep a firm grip on the medical tool.

"You've got to learn to do this eventually," Ratchet said seriously. "No time like the present to do so. And don't drop that."

"Speedy," Arcee said, still standing in her position at the head of the recharge station. She pulled one of her hand's gently from her young friend's hard grip, so that she could rest on instead on her shoulder, trying hard to calm her when she saw the fear in her optics again. "Keep intaking Nice and calm. You're doing such a good job."

"Owwwww," Speedbreaker groaned helplessly. The pain was lessened greatly now because her fully open spark chamber had released most of the internal pressure that had caused a great deal of the pain. But it did still hurt considerably, and she was so exhausted already.

"Speedbreaker," Arcee's free hand went quickly to Speedy's shoulder panel, which she shook just the tiniest bit, to direction her attention to the right. "Look."

Bumblebee and Ratchet had successfully retrieved the first tiny newspark. And already the tiny thing had been dropped into the first of the two frames on the repair table. And despite the old bot's concerns that the youngling might still be still with weakness and shock from its birth, the tiny thing moved at once, legs kicking hard and arms waving mildly while it wailed with it's obvious displeasure at it's brand new situation.

"He looks good," Ratchet said, speaking quickly, and scanning the tiny newborn youngling just as fast, before he scooped up the youngling into his arms, holding him tightly while he helped his young student to retrieve the second one.

"He?" Speedbreaker asked, gasping for an intake as pain began abruptly to fade from her body. "A boy?"

"Indeed. And a perfectly healthy one at that it seems," Ratchet exclaimed, grinning now, as he hurriedly scanned the second one, who still lay on the repair table. "And his... sister – who spent hours letting him hitch a ride."

"A little girl! Speedbreaker cried with wonder and excitement. But she could hear the cry of only one youngling, that had stopped just as quickly as it had begun. Her optics grew wide, as she struggled to sit herself up just enough that she could try to look around the small room. "Ratchet? 'Bee? What's wrong? S..something's wrong! Are... are they okay?"

"Perfect," Ratchet answered, and the laugh he gave assured her at once.

The old medic turned around then to face the new carrier, one twin in each arm. Both kicked and wiggled just a little, looking around with interested optics. And held as they were, they had reached for each other at once, The second born holding the fingertips of the first with one tiny hand.

Bumblebee took the tiny boy then, and Speedbreaker was handed the girl. Both brand new frames, still simply grey and coated in oily protestant, began to show colours – each one a mix of vibrant orange and bright yellow, both highlighted lightly in silver and the patterns nearly identical. Both burst out crying loudly all at once the first they had heard the second born cry, and she was so clearly just as good at it as the first - only to slowly stop again when 'Bee happened to step closer to his mate, inevitably allowing the younglings to grab each other's hands clumsily again.

"'Bee," Speedbreaker said, a laughing smile on her face-plate right along with her dismay. "We'll have a job and a half to get them to recharge in their own individual baskets once we get them home. They miss each other the second they're a metre apart!"

"So we let them recharge together in one of them for a few days," Bumblebee answered easily, laughing with amusement and wonder at the behaviour of his younglings. "Then see what happens. "It sure won't hurt anything."

* * *

Very soon after the completion of both the hospital's youngling ward and its new carrier's room; the next, much smaller project had been to install a decently sized hot pool. It occupied a room at the end of a lesser used corridor, and furnished with a couple of blue cushioned benches to match the rough oil proof tiles on the floor. And while the hot pool had been built mostly for the benefit of hospital patients who used it mostly for physical therapy, it had just as quickly become a favoured after hours hang out for the Autobot team - who far preferred it over the larger, but also much louder and always far more crowded one inside the downtown rec-centre. And sure enough, that evening a few of the 'bots say in and around the hot pool, laughing, at present over some ridiculousness involving confused vehicle modes and newly installed traffic lights downtown.

"I would have expected if anything was going to go wrong, they would have all tried to go at the same time," Arcee exclaimed through laughter despite knowing that perhaps it was not entirely a laughing matter. "I'm glad they all stopped instead. I really am of course. Still, someone has got to put out a notice about the meaning and use of a 'four way stop' at flashing reds!"

"Four bots all stopped at an intersection mumbling 'after you' for five minutes," Bulkhead laughed loudly. And he shook his head hard all the while. "At least they've learned well to stop on red."

"Were we wrong to implement traffic lights here?" Arcee questioned, her own laughter all but over with by now. "It's not Cybertronian. It's Earth's system. And these refugees have no idea how it's really all supposed to work."

"No, it's probably not ideal," Ratchet said from the open doorway of the room. It closed behind him as soon as he steeped inside and he walked quickly across the room, obviously planning to join the others in the small pool, which he promptly did. "But with so many bots back here now and a traffic safety problem, we needed to do something quickly. Let's face it. That Earth system was much faster to set up than our old way would have been." The old bot sat a second in the warm watery oil, shifting just a little in order to let it flow from a small jet behind him against his achy lower back hinges. "I don't want this place to start to look like just another Earth. But the lights are working, and those bot's thankfully do seem to caught onto the idea that red mean stop and green means go."

"Personally I like the traffic lights so far..." Knockout said. He sat, quite casually, on the blue tiled floor, with his now empty mobility cart still directly behind him And he gave a wistful kind of chuckle under his intake, as he watched Cybershock playing with her much loved toy cars on the bench near the door. "Even if I can't actually drive... still, something about sitting, just watching, waiting for that red light to turn green again..."

"Of course you would feel that way," Ratchet exclaimed with a laugh of his own.

"What?" Knockout demanded laughing along. He rubbed at a sore and dented right knee, frowned at bad scuffs on his lower left leg, and winced with discomfort as he shifted his body just a little and sent small jolts of pain through his right hip joint in doing so. "It's true. We all know it's true. Don't tell me you haven't all done it!"

"Why don't you come in here?" Arcee invited, gesturing with a hand for her mate to join them in the small pool. "The warm oil will do you some good."

Knockout shuffled awkward though still efficiently enough over the floor a short ways, before he slowly dropped his feet into the hot pool. Finally, letting the water support enough of his weight to stop him from instantly falling in doing so, in slid in an sat up perfectly well again.

"I hadn't realized just how bad I'd banged myself up until after I got back off that machine and onto the floor," he remarked, his dismay obvious right along with his embarrassment.

"That fall was pretty bad," Arcee said, understanding, as she looked him over in concern. And Knockout only nodded a little, staring for a moment down into the shiny oil of the hot pool.

Falling was hardly new to him. Given his condition, and the unending determination with which he approached rehabilitation work it did seem like he fell almost daily as of late. That evening however he'd managed to fall much harder than ever before anyone could help him – landing hard on the medbay floor, causing dents to his body from the hard impact and lucky to not have also smashed his head in doing so. Still, he'd managed to walk at least ten steps holding into a walking frame before he stumbled forward when the whole thing had gotten away from him, and tipped over. And even then, after he'd finally succeeded in sitting himself up again – painfully and winded - he'd only wanted more than ever to start over and try again, because perhaps he could make it much further next time.

"I'll be fine by morning," Knockout said, his words hurried enough to make his embarrassment over the entire subject clear. And Ratchet shoot a mild glare in his direction at once.

"Maybe so," the old bot muttered. "In fact, more than likely so. Still, we are going easier tomorrow with your rehab work. That little accident today was my own fault I fear, and you could have been hurt far worse. You're no good to anyone on injury leave, and you already have processor damage!"

"I talked briefly with Ultra Magnus this evening," Arcee said, changing the subject easily, in light of her mate's more than obvious unease.

Cybershock ran to her then, tossing her little toy cars into ehr compartment as she ran, and nearly slipping on the wet tiles next to the hot pool, becasue she wasn't paying attention. Arcee grabbed the youngling at once, a hand flying out to steady her without even a thought. Cybeshock plopped herself down at once by the edge of the hot pool. And curiously she touched her fingertips to the watery oil, leaving then submerged fro just a second before she pulled them out again, obviously having decided it was too hot for her liking.

"It seems Soundwave told him he wants to be an Autobot..." Arcee continued, scooping some oil up into ehr hands and leaving it to cool there a second before she rubbed it gently over the back of her child's frame, making her smile.

"The war is over," Bulkhead muttered, confused and with a shrug of his big shoulders. "What difference would that possibly make now...?"

"That's what Ultra Magnus told him," Arcee explained, as baffled as her teammate was. "That it makes little difference. Soundwave says it matters to him."

"I feel like we should let him," Ratchet said slowly, thoughtfully. He sat up a little straighter in the water oil, and the look on his face-plate showed that he was entirely serious. "None of us became Autobots just to fight and win a war after all. It's about everything we believe in; our vision for Cybertron, our own ideals. And if Soundwave, or anybot for that matter, wishes to clam those ideas as his own... well then..."

"I think I'm with Ratchet on this," Bulkhead said, nodding his head slowly, as he too considered.

"I never thought I'd see the day that Soundwave of any bot on Cybertron..." Arcee mumbled, not at all unhappily. But she didn't even bother to finish the thought, and instead simply added, "So who's going over everything with him to prepare for imitation vows?"

"I will," Bulk answered quickly. And no one was surprised.

"If no one objects to this..." Knockout said. And he looked around at each of his teammates with some hesitation, along with his confidence, "This could well be an opportunity for me to take my own as well..."

"Knockout," Bulkhead mumbled, now so obviously fully confused. He exchanged glances with Ratchet, who just shrugged a little, so clearly uncertain himself. "You've been an Autobot for years already..."

"I know," Knockout replied, explaining seriously, while he shifted in the pool both nervous and trying to let the water flow nicely against the hip he'd banged hard in his impact with the floor. "But... it was never official. I nearly died the day we tried, remember? We all jsut called it good enough, but..."

Bulkhead and Ratchet continued to exchange their looks of dismay for a moment, but Acree smiled immediately in her understanding.

* * *

"I'm so glad you came back," Firestorm mumbled happily, while she untangled herself gently from Soundwave's cables as soon as he had put her down on the ground, in their favoured tiny valley partway up a mountain range. She took a fast and stumbling step toward him at once. And reaching up just as hug as she could, she hugged him - refusing to let go again, until he laughed suddenly and swept her up into his arms, lifting her back up from the ground again.

Soundwave was almost twice Firestorm's size, and he must have enough to well reflect that. Still, when he stood for many long moments, just holding her so casually metres above the ground, she was shocked momentarily by his strength, until she realized quite quickly that of course was nothing at all considering how easily he carried her while flying great distances.

"I missed you," Firestorm said. She kicked her feet a little, playfully, as they hung over Soundwave's left arm, and added quite simply while smiling, "but I'm sure you must know that."

"I do know that," Soundwave answered. He set her back down again, on both of her feet, and watched with some concern as she stumbled just a little, lacking any decent balance on the uneven ground littered with shifting flakes of metal. But she she gently held his hands, in order to steady herself standing. And he easily allowed it, smiling again, before he added, "I missed you to."

"You look much better now than you did yesterday. And you sound happier too... far more like you again."

"I am... most certanly trying as hard as I can."

"Thank you for bringing me back up here again," Firestorm grinned. Looking up so she could see Soundwave's optics.

"I know you've always loved this place," Soundwave replied, explaining simply. He paused then for a moment, before he continued on, thoughtfully. "I am still greatly amazed however, at your willingness to be carried in the air."

"Is that so strange a thing?" Firestorm asked, honestly surprised. And even more surprising to her was the serious look on Soundwave's face-plate.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You are a ground class bot."

"So?"

"Unusual," Soundwave remarked, still thoughtful and reflective, "to have met a single one not perfectly content with all wheels on the ground, and terribly uneasy with the thought of wings and thrusters instead."

"Well I love the sky... the open air," Firestorm said firmly. They had forgotten to bring her walking frame with them, and as she used it far less then ever by then, she noticed the lack of it, only as seh stumbled again because of the shifting flakes of metal. With only a tiny shrug at that, she sat on the ground, pulling Soundwave down gently with her, by playfully yanking his hands as she dropped. And once seated comfortably on the rough metal of the ground beneath then, she moved to rest her head against his chest panel, and sat like that watching Laserbeak, flying wide circles above them in the sky. "I've started to wish more and more every time we fly together, that I could have my own pair of wings instead of silly little wheels..."

Soundwave had never been to to think himself superior to grounders, simply because of his use of wings as opposed to their wheels. He'd come to learn well that so many held that very opinion (and he knew just as well, how many grounders saw superiority in their own set of wheels. To him such opinions had always seemed senseless and lacking in purpose. Still, he was a flighted bot himself. And he knew as well as any such bot, what it was to love the open sky.

"In your spark," he mumbled, smiling with something he hoped would show as understanding," you were meant to be a flyer..."

Firestorm thought for a second before she nodded, slowly and hesitant. She watched the tiny bot above flying for a moment more before she lowered her gaze and shrugged just a little. Because in her mind, she was what she was because of genetics and simple CNA and programming. The true desires of a spark made little difference when it came to such things as one's form.

"I talked to Ratchet today," she said, immediately switching their talk to a new subject entirely. "I told him I just be surrendering my room back to the Autobots soon, because you and I both know almost everything I own is now in yours anyway. He suggested that perhaps we would like to be put onto the housing list... Two new buildings will be finished soon, with room for us in either one.

"Did you give an answer?" Again Soundwave was simply curious. And he watched as she smiled again.

"I told him I would talk to you tonight about it." The minibot giggled, as she moved again, reaching out to hold his hands, smiling brighter when he offered both at once.

"So..." she said, her expression serious then. "This is me... talking to you."

"You stayed on the base because of your rebooting risk."

"And I haven't had a single reboot since the cybermatter trial..."

"I stayed because..." Soundwave's words died in the air, his own thought hall finished. But Firestorm poked him lightly, playfully, in the side of his frame with an extended fingertip.

"Because why?" she asked, smiling. "Why did you stay there so long?"

"I... stayed at first because I couldn't imagine I was worthy of any real housing, a nice home that could really be mine. Also, given my former position under Megatron, it stood easily to reason to any bot with a price on my head, I would have been too easy a target in any of the complexes."

"Such things are simmering down now. Yes there will always be some... notable exceptions. But overall, it's hardly so dangerous now."

"You are correct," Soundwave said, He smiled again, realizing only then how good it felt to smile still with her, even after his his very recent new traumas. His smile faded quickly though and he just stared around the room for a moment, strangely sheepishly, as he continued on. "I stayed though, even when I could well have left, because you were still there."

Firestorm smiled silently for a long moment at his answer. But in another moment the smile had faded, leaving only a look of contemplation on her face-plate. And still she just stayed silent.

"Something is bothering you..." Soundwave guessed, thoughtfully. He shifted a little a fair bit, moving his hands away from hers and instead pulling her against him to show his concern. And he hoped she would say more. But she didn't.

"What is it?" he asked her slowly.

"We can... talk about this some other time," Firestorm answered, smiling again, as she looked at him again. Her look made it clear she really was content in waiting and she just smiling brighter again, her hands reaching for his slowly. "When you really feel better..."

"I feel fine tonight," Soundwave answered. And he smiled right back to assure her. He watched her just a moment more and felt sure he could easily guess what it was she was thinking of so intently. So he mumbled quietly, thouhg still calm and questioning. "You want to know I suppose, why it is I told you I will never have a youngling?"

"It's just..." Firestorm looked him in the optics again. And though she was hesitant for another second or two, she quickly continued on. "You have Laserbeak to care for, and you've never failed her..."

"Laserbeak is not a youngling" Soundwave answered, understanding at once exactly where it was she was coming from, though still mildly amused anyway. "And she was already an adult – granted still a young one – when she found me. It was never my duty to raise her.. to shape her future and who she would become..."

"My point still feels relevant."

"I had not realized at all until your previous still recent mention of it, that you wanted a youngling at all."

"Of course I do. Just like most bots on Cybertron now. The younglings are the future! And the children of everyone else are so wonderful an amazing. I play with them and pick them up, and I always smile so much when I do. But they aren't mine. I want my own as much as the others wanted theirs, because I'm not so different..."

"Firestorm..."

"We would be so good with our own youngling," Firestrom said. And now, with the subject in the open again, she spoke about the matter willingly all to aware of the tears forming in her optics. "We'd love it so much. And teach it everything it needs to be a good bot one day..."

"No," Soundwave answered slowly. She may not have been bonded to him, but still he could sense her sparkbreak, and his own sparked dropped because of it. Still he went on, explaining firmly. "I would be a terrible creator. Never in my young life did I know a day of love from my own. I've killed, done too much harm, learned to act on hate and anger. I barely knew how to speak until I had lived for half a century."

"Knockout is a former 'con too," Firestorm said, and again Soundwave knew at once where she was coming from. Though he could not agree that her reasoning was good enough. "He loves Cybershock more than anything. Primus help the world when he learns to walk again. He'd surely kill to protect her one day if a need to ever came up. He'd move mountains if they stood between her and the world..."

"Knockout is nothing like me," Soundwave answered firmly. And he said nothing more about it, because in his own mind that said enough.

"You say you will never compromise," Firestorm began to question. And despite the serious and emotionally charged nature of the subject at hand, she just looked up at Soundwave still calmly, and went on speaking, without a hint of anger in her voice. "What if I decided someday I couldn't compromise either?"

"Firestorm, I love you more than anyone," Soundwave answered. His voice was sad and serious and firm all at the same time. "You are the bot that taught me I could love anyone at all... that I still possessed the spark for it as well as anyone else. I want to keep you with me forever. But I cannot hold you against you own will and you know well I would never try. If someday you moved on to find some bot who would give you the life I cannot, I would never beg you not to go with him."

"I'm not leaving," Firestorm said. The tears in her optics fell down her face-plate when she understood the unbending seriousness of Soundwave's words. And she shifted quickly, half laying on the rough ground again, so that her head came to rest in his lap, while she spoke with determination. "I can't imagine a time I'd ever want to do that. But don't need to figure this out right now."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes/ Yay! Updating quickly this time it seems. And I'm much happier with this chapter than I was with a last couple of them. I've got a fair bit of action in this one, which I still doubt myself in my ability write well, though others see to like anyway, so... I've also written a good bit of them one using Cybershock's perspective again, which is obviously different because she's little. It's interesting though, writing in 'kid vision' and I had fun doing it.**

"You're so quiet tonight, Arcee," Knockout said. He smiled at her in the dim lighting of their room, and shifted a little on the recharge station, so that he could look at her, laying stay on the side that faced toward him, with her optics still wide open. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Just fine," Arcee answered. And she moved then so that she could lay on her back and smile up at him. When he moved a little more, laying flat again and shuffling closer to her, she moved again to rest her head against his body armour. "I just... I've been doing some thinking..."

"Sounds dangerous," Knockout joked, laughing quietly until she lightly smacked him.

"What are you thinking?" he asked then, making a show of rubbing the arm she'd smacked, pretending she'd hurt him – which of course she hadn't in the least.

"Thoughts I only hope will make you happy," Arcee answered. Her tone was and odd mix now of nervous and playful. And she held her head up a moment resting on her elbows on the recharge station grinning, before she lowered her head again to rest it against him. "Thoughts I only hope won't scare you half to death."

"Arcee... this sounds serious..." Knockout was nervous now. But he stayed where he was, letting her hug him.

"I think..." his mate said slowly. And her voice was just slightly muffled, her face-plate against his body panels. "I think we should try for another youngling..."

"What?" Knockout exclaimed, after the long moment it had taken just for his processor to register exactly what it was she was suggesting. And now that he could easily sit himself up on the recharge station, he did so the second she raised her head from his plating. "Arcee... what?"

"I can't even gauge your true reaction," Arcee said. She laughed a little, but it was nervous laughter. "All I see is sheer terror in your optics..."

"We already have a youngling," Knockout replied hesitantly, as soon as he'd managed to at least began to collect his thoughts and calm himself again. Then he smiled brightly in her direction. "One beautiful and perfect little bot."

"I know. But the only thing better than one perfect little bot, might just be two perfect little bots..."

"You... you're completely serious..."

"Of course I'm serious."

"We talked it over before Cybershock was born. Decided she was our happy accident and we would do our best, but she would be our only one..."

"We decided that when we thought you'd likely never walk again," Arcee answered, sitting up beside him, and smiling. "When we were still facing the fact that you'd never be close to ever fully functioning again. It made sense then... there's no way we could have handled any more... though you sure surprised everyone with just how efficient you were with her once she was born. But things are different now. You can do so much. You can chase after Cybershock while I hold the newborn... then we can trade off. And with you mobile on your own, I can tend to both at once while you do what you need to..."

"Arcee... where did this come from?"

"Cybershock is getting older every day," Arcee said, considering her words as she spoke. "Of course I love my growing young child with all of my spark, but I miss my tiny baby. 'Bee and Speedy's twins are so cute and helpless, and Hotwire loves them both so much. All he talked about today at the preschool was how he's a big brother now. They'll all get to grow up together, as siblings. I feel sad those days to think that Cybershock won't get to have what they all do. And then, you held that youngling patient of yours the other day, while we had Cybershock with us outside the base. And I saw how well we can really do together with two little bots at once." Arcee lay back down again, bringing her bondmate with her as she did. And she moved again, shifting so that she could lay once again with her head resting on his chest panel and hug him. She smiled a little just as soon as he hugged her right back. And right away she went on with her musings. "This apartment of ours may not be huge, but we still have plenty of room for one more in here..."

"Arcee," Knockout said seriously. And his great concern was clear. "My own limitations were not the only reason we decided Cybershock would be the only child we'd ever have. Sure we were pretty well decided all along on that. But I think you nearly dying due to medical complications of her spark separation kind of made that final for us. Plus, she did have such a rough start in her frame, even if it did work out fine.."

"I've already spoken to Ratchet," Arcee answered slowly. "I know I should have talked to you first. But I wanted another opinion to be sure it was even possible, before I talked to you. He made it clear I'd be high risk right out of the gate. I kinda figured that much. He's not exactly pleased, but he said he's hardly shocked either that I'd want this anyway. And if we did succeed in producing a newspark, both I and said newspark would have the best care possible. With Cybershock, we did everything right. For it to end in near disaster... that was all just bad luck. As I understand it, there's no reason to think that in carrying again I couldn't be perfectly fine."

"I think we need to think on this awhile." Knockout's answer was far from agreement. But it was certainly not refusal either. And as the pair shifted again, both of them getting comfortable for a night's recharge, she saw him smile in the dimness of the room.

* * *

Cybershock knew full well she should have been in recharge. The darkness outside her small window, which she lay next to, told her it was sometime in the middle of the night. Still, she was wide awake regardless, had no idea why, and simply couldn't help it. The youngling bot sat up on her recharge station, pulling her black and white checkered cover up with her as she did. And for a good while she just sat like that, staring out the small window beside her, at hundreds of bright distant stars that shone high above.

The young bots in her preschool class liked to say that stars were tiny lights, hung above the world from invisible strings. And that every night, sometime just after sunset, somebot living alone high up in the sulphur mountains would flip a switch and 'turn on' the stars. Cybershock had never told them so, because she knew it wasn't very nice – but she'd always thought that was just plain stupid. Stars were burning hot massive objects, much like Cybertron's own sun, but so far away that they looked like simple dots of light instead of blazing balls. Her Creator had taught her that one night, while she sat on his lap on the patio. He taught her so many things. And though she sometimes asked far too many questions, and she knew it, he never seemed to tire of answering them for her.

Once last week, he'd taken her down to the sidewalk, out the doors of their building, after the sky had turned dark, and she was still wide awake, so that they could watch the sky from there instead. He'd pointed to the east and them to the north-west, gesturing carefully to groups of stars high above them. And he explained that once, on a place called Earth, the human race had given names to their own vastly different such groups. His best human friend, Miko, had taught him a few of them once. Cybershock had tried herself then to see images in the stars over Cybertron. She'd seen them at once, when she let herself try. And she'd pointed and clapped her hands, excited, while she explained what each one could be, and her creator had laughed, smiling. Her carrier had wandered out then, wondering where in the world either one had gone, because neither of them had thought to tell her anything while she was busy on the commlink. And she'd laughed too, sitting down on the sidewalk, listening intently while Cybershock explained to her exactly what it was she'd just discovered, looking at the sky.

The youngling sat up straighter on her recharge station, turning a little so she could lean against her window. And with her face-plate pressed against it, she looked out, trying hard to get a better view, to see far more of the huge night sky all at once. But the window was small and the sky was so big. And Cybershock slowly crept from her recharge station altogether, walking slowly across her room and out to the hallway, still dragging her cover, wrapped loosely around her frame, as she walked.

The apartment was dark. But that didn't bother her at all. She found the door to her creators' room easily. And found it closed tightly. She listened, close to it for a second and heard nothing at all from inside. Both of then then sound in recharge. Cybershock dropped the cover somewhere in front of their closed door, and she simply walked on with a tiny shrug, out toward the living room. She crossed that quickly, guided by the dim light that shone day and night from the main corridor outside the apartment. The youngling reached up in order to touch the front of her hand to a small switch next to the door, unlocking the door so that it slid open when she stood in front of it it. Once it had, she hurried out of the apartment.

Running to the end of the corridor, she reached the elevator. And though it crossed her mind to wonder for a second if its doors would slide open for a bot of her tiny size, they sure enough did. She stepped on at once, and thinking a second, recalling exactly what she'd always done each time either of her creators let her do it when she rode up and down with them, she reached up to grab the lever on the wall, and pulled it down, setting it to 'one' for the ground floor. And not before she'd made a mental note to set it to 'ten' to get back up again. The elevator was empty, and although she'd expected it would be, she was still surprised with just how big it suddenly seemed to her, in there all by herself for the first time in her life. Still she just smiled a little, leaning causally against the back wall like so many of the grown bots seemed to do when they rode up and down - and counted down the numbers of the floors as each one flashed before her on the little screen above the door, before the doors popped open again at the end of the short ride.

Standing a second later in the main atrium, just as well lit as the hallway at had at that late hour, she looked around a moment and wondered if perhaps she ought to go on back upstairs to her family's apartment. For a second more it occurred to her that she ought to be nervous, out of the apartment all by herself. But no grown bot even seem to be so when they ventured anywhere. And she reasoned that she therefore had little reason to fear either. With another small shrug, followed quickly by a grin, Cybershock ran to the main doors leading to the street outside, and grinned brighter when they slid open just as easily as the doors to the elevator had.

The youngling certainly knew better than to be outside by herself. She knew it was surely something her carrier would call her 'bad little bot' for doing, if she ever knew. And she certainly didn't want to be bad. Still she didn't see the harm and her creators were sure still both recharging without any hint at all that she was even gone. She'd be back quickly, she decided at once. And she only wanted to look at the sky.

The air was cool, and it chilled her armour just a little as soon as she stepped outside of the building. And it was dark too. Much darker then it had even looked from her window high above, even with the streetlights glowing along both sides of the empty street. Cybershock had never been outside so late at night ever before in her life. And standing on the dark walkway she'd never seen truly empty before, just that tiny part the world seemed huge. Stepping away from the building just a short distance, she turned around to look way up toward the windows of her family's small apartment. It took her a while to find it, because she'd only even done it in daylight before. But she knew it faced the street, and front there it was only a matter of counting ten floors up, using the windows – which was strangely tricky to do at night because strange shadows covered the windows and the metal of the building's front, and it was all so dim besides. Finally though she stopped her own checked curtains of her recharge room, and the beige ones mounted in the living room, and looked oddly dark greyish in the dark. Between the two windows was that of her creators' room (their own curtains blended into the darkness to well to really see at all, but she knew the window because it was between those she could recognize.) And the lack of any light from there made her smile just a little because she knew they had still not woken up to find her gone.

Cybershock plopped down into a seated position on the cold smooth metal of the walkway next to the street. And leaning with her back lightly against the building, she looked up into the sky. Her face-plate broke out into a joyful grin at once, when she saw the endless stars high above. She easily thought there had to be a million of them, way more then she'd seen ever before, filling Cybertron's dark sky with tiny dots of white light in any direction. And with her spark racing with her joy, she looked around the sky above quickly, trying hard to find the familiar pictures she'd seen formed by those same stars so recently.

To her left were the 'hungry scraplets,' which she'd named because fourteen stars reminding her of two such creatures, mouths wide open. (At least it seemed so from pictures she'd seen in a data pad once, deciding just as quickly that day, she would never want to see a real living one.) Right above her was the 'Autobot warrior,' posed forever watching over the world with his blaster in his hand. Somewhere to the right were both the 'two wheeler' and the 'racing car.' And not far from those was the one she'd finally called 'hey, who spilled the energon,' because at least two hundred tiny far away stars looked like something literally spilled carelessly across a corner of the sky.

A strange and unexpected moving shadow passed by then, across the sky. And for a second it covered the stars that Cybershock was staring up at. The youngling turned her head at once, to watch it as it turned sharply in the air high overhead, and flew back in a direction close to the way it had come. She wondered, mostly just in passing who it might have been. And hoping that whoever it was hadn't seen her clearly, or at least didn't know her creators in order to tell them they had, she tried to think of everybot she knew of with a flying alt mode. She was startled though - and would have jumped back a mile had she not been seated and up against a building - when she realized that whoever it was she was watching, she had not heard the usual and familiar loud noise of a roaring engines from it.

She heard instead the loud steady beating of heavy wings. And she got to her feet at once, looking around frantically to follow the shadowed shape in her growing confusion, as whoever it was flew high above the top of the building she lived in. She lost sight of it quickly as it went fast over the roof, and and she realized only than that whoever that bot had been, it was someone much bigger than most bots she knew. And curious where she knew perhaps she ought of have been scared instead, she stood for a good moment longer, staring up just as high as she could toward the roof of the high rise, just hoping the flying figure would turn around somewhere and reappear again. And she was entirely confused when a second after that, she heard the noise of engines that she might have easily expected in the moments before. It made at least some sense when she understood in a second of simply paying attention, that the sound of engines had come from a different direction.

"A good evening to you, small youngling," said somebot behind her. And Cybershock turned around at once to see whoever had spoken, transform in the middle of the street from a huge jet mode and into a proportionately huge bot mode.

"Hello," Cybershock said, politely though hesitant. She had been warned at least a hundred times in her life to be careful around strange bots – and this one certainly appeared strange, landing in the empty street in the dark of night.

"Tell me then, youngling," the huge stranger, a shiny silver one with optics the colour of her creator's, said. "Who are you? And to whom do you belong?"

The youngling just stood still a second staring up into the face-plate of this bot, before looking down to decide she didn't like the look of his sharpened claw-like fingers on his two huge hands.

"My name is Cybershock," she said, still hesitant, but deciding there was still little cause to be downright impolite to a bot she'd only just met. The questioning of her 'belonging' confusing her though for a second, because as far as she knew she'd never belonged to anyone. Finally though, understanding dawned, and she realized exactly what he'd clearly meant. "My creator and carrier are Autobots Knockout and Arcee."

It felt strange to her to use their actual names. She never had before, though she did know them of course. They had taught her once to remember both of their names well, just in case she ever got lost, they'd said once. She was glad now to know she'd really remembered.

"Ah yes," the stranger said. He smiled a strangely frightful looking smile and showed a mouthful of sharpened teeth to match his fingertips. And the ground vibrated just a little as he took a few slow steps toward the youngling, who might have backed up had she not be still been close to the wall. "I knew them well."

"You... you do?" Cybershock's voice was a mix now of surprise and even curiosity mixed in with quickly growing unease. And she watched the strange bot for a moment, as he tapped the pointed fingers of his hands together and grinned a grin that looked more like a snarl than much else.

"I did indeed," he said. And he took another step closer. "Knockout far more of the two however. Tell me, Cybershock," his optics flashed then with a much brighter crimson and the look he gave in that second unnerved her at once. "How much do you really know about your creator?"

"Lots!" Cybershock said And in spite of her and fully knowing far better, she took a bold step forward and planted her hands on her hips, just hoping she might somehow appear the slightest bit bigger than she really was. "I know that he's a wonderful medic, and he used to be a street racer. And telling him he'll never do something again only makes him try to work out exactly how to do it anyway. I know he loves my carrier and she loves him, and they both love me!"

"I don't suppose you know about his life before you happened," the silver painted stranger said slowly. And tone of voice well combined with the way he stepped forward slightly faster now, seemed increasingly sinister. "He wasn't always an Autobot. But you wouldn't have known that."

"I Think I know the basics," Cybershock answered. And she tried on purpose for her very best 'grown bot language,' while she looked the silver stranger in the optics and sidestepped slightly closer to the building's door. And her her surprise the huge stranger just laughed, a low chuckle far more menacing this time, before he stepped in front of the door, blocking the youngling's path.

"I... I think," Cybershock said boldly as she could manage. And she held a finger in the stranger's direction in pointed accusation. "You're a Decepticon!"

The stranger's laughter grew louder, and he just shook his head, Cybershock hurried away from the door she;d been inching toward. And she stepped out into the empty street because she couldn't think of anywhere else that she could go. Slowly, his voice just as low as his laughter by now, the silver painted stranger spook again.

"No no, Cybershock. Ah, well I suppose you are partly correct. I certainly was a Decipticon once. In fact," he held his hand then to emphasize his point, and he chuckled again darkly. "I built the cause. Every 'Con on Cybertron and later the universe – they all followed me, served the cause because I taught them to."

The huge silver bot stood silent a brief moment, just shaking his head as though he was almost confused, or least somehow conflicted. He wrung his hands together and took a few steps forward, moving surprisingly fast for a bot so big. His red optics flashed brighter again fro a second, before he smiled again. And finally he held out a hand, just as though he thought the youngling might actually offer him hers right back.

"I gave it up, you see," he said, explaining. "I have seen the grave error of my ways. Tyranny destroyed this world once, Cybershock. Five million bots died on battle fields all in the name of a war that I know was all my own fault. I didn't listen to the many that over, over many centuries, of how we might still find peace on our world. In fact I quickly grew so tired of hearing their opinions that I cut off their heads!"

Cybershock had never heard such violent talk before. The Autobots told war their war stories to younglings often, because she and her friends were all so curious and they liked to hear about it. But they 'kept it clean' in the words of her carrier, and told youngling friendly 'tame' versions of their battle tales. Never had she ever heard mention of any bot cutting off another's head! This bot so violent, Cybershock decided quickly. And though she had not liked him even the slightest bit to begin with, she made up her mind that she liked him far less by then.

The youngling looked up again, toward the windows she had identified already as those of her family's apartment. And just as much as she had been relieved when moments before those windows were dark, her spark sank now at seeing they still were. Coolant tears formed in her optics when she understood no one knew even then that she was outside at all. And she wasn't sure exactly how to reach the door while this stranger she'd already seen move so fast, clearly did not want her to.

"I have found new purpose now," the huge silver bot said. He gave another sinister chuckle and took a step toward the youngling again. He stared at her now, his optics never leaving her for a second. "I did so many wrongs, committed so many unspeakable acts against Cybertron and Cybertronian kind! The worst of it all, I fear every day, might have been to leave behind living bots effected so terribly by everything I made them become. The only thing I can hope for now is that I can terminate them all one by one, and wipe away the stain of their corruption left behind on our new world!"

Cybershock back up a few good paces at once, and she would have kept on going, clean across the road with the thought of turning, running, and reaching the building that Bumblebee and Speedbreaker lived in, across the road and two doors down. But she tripped over her own feet at the worst possible second. And before she could scramble back up to standing, the huge silver bot grabbed her with one huge strong arm. And he lifted her from the ground at once, holding her high above the street, while he just chuckled again and shook his head.

"Put me down!" Cybershock screamed. And she kicked him as hard as she could in the metal of his chest panel, knowing full well that his was far too big and strong to really be hurt by a kick from a small youngling, but hoping the metal on metal noise would cause someone to wake up somewhere and run to their windows. And held tightly by the huge bot, she tilted her head up, to stare him in the optics. "You're someone dangerous I think. My carrier says I don't need to like everyone. And I don't like you!"

"Understandable, young Cybershock," the stranger chuckled horribly again. "I'm not exactly the likeable sort. I came to the city tonight to look for your creator actually. You see, he served my cause under me for a century or more, before he defected to the Autobots. Somewhere along the line he must have fallen in love with that carrier of yours, which I must say is a bit... unforeseen. I hadn't exactly expected at all however that Knockout also has a child..." his optics blazed that awful brighter red again, and he growled as he tightened his grip on the youngling, who let out her best and loudest scream to make noise, and just hopping it might scare him off. "You are the youngling of a corrupted Deception, a broken spark that can never be fully repaired of the damage I did. He can only ruin you to in turn ruin the next generation after. I will therefore extinguish your own tiny spark tonight. I cannot, I will not let my own endless damage continue to plague this world I only wish to repair once and for all!"

Cybershock's spark pounded then, and for a second she was frozen with terror so great she could not even move. But quickly she did move again, kicking her tiny feet harder against the stranger's body armour, hitting him anywhere her feet could possibly land. And she screamed, yelling louder than she'd ever yelled before, just as though her life depended on it. Because in that second she understood it really may have indeed depended on it. This bot truly meant to kill her, and she knew he could if he really did want to. She was a small second frame youngling still far from, just beginning to read simple code. And he was so big and strong and sparkless.

She thought then of her creator and her carrier, still high above somewhere in the family apartment they all so happily shared together. And ever at her young age, Cybershock knew her off-lining would matter to them. She remembered quickly each of the very few times she'd ever seen her carrier cry. And she thought then that she would surely cry harder than she ever had before, giving up on working in the preschool and missing her only baby. And her creator, disabled and struggling all her life and finally so close to really walking again – she knew at once he'd simply give up on trying, because so much of everything he tried to do, he tried it all for her. She knew his processor had failed twice before – once after she'd already existed and once before, but she'd never really thought to wonder before how and why that happened. It had always just been something she was just sort of aware of as a fact of her life. But she wondered it all now, and her spark pulsed still faster when she wondered if perhaps her passing would cause it to fail again. It would surely be enough to kill him this time, if it did happen that way. And she cried hot heavy tears of coolant when she understood just as quickly that his spark would surely been broken entirely regardless of what happened to him. And if was possibly to cry still harder, she did when she remembered in eh next fleeting second that none of that mattered, because this evil stranger fully planned to kill him too when he was done with her.

"No, no no, please no," Cybershock begged, shaking from her hard sobbing cries. "I can't die. I can't!"

"A quick and honourable passing from this life," the huge silver stranger growled at her. And his optics flashed with something that looked like so strangely twisted and sickening pity before he only glared again at her. "A good and clean death for you, worthy of a warrior."

"Let me go!" Cybershock shrieked. And her optics travelled in that second back again to the windows of her home.

There were lights now, bright in every room, including her own. And it made her spark sunk to see the lights now, because she understood it was far too late. It was only a matter of a moment now before her creators came downstairs because they'd realized she was nowhere inside. And they might just made it just in time to see her dead, or even to watch it happen, unable to do a thing but beg. Cybershock was so consumed with her panic, that she heard nothing at all of another engine, as the second flying alt mode approached.

"Megatron!" a voice roared across the darkness of the night. And Cybershock's spark surely skipped a full pulse when she heard the name she recognized from war stories. It surely skipped another when she understood the identity of the bot that still held her off the ground.

She turned around, as as well as she could in her partly pinned position, and her optics locked on Soundwave, who stood on the walkway next to the street. This was the first time she had ever seen the standoffish nearly silent bot without his usual cover over his face-plate, and she could clearly see that he was downright glaring at the stranger, with his own optics full of burning rage.

"Soundwave," the huge silver stranger – Megatron – said. His tone was terrifying now. "Stay out out of this. You lack any true understanding of the damage I seek to rectify."

"I will destroy you," Soundwave answered. His voice, usually quiet or least it was when he talked the little he did with most bots on the base, was powerful and serious. "My own greatest mistake, and one I seek to undo quickly, was once allowing you to live in the pits of Kaon."

"Soundwave. You... you were once my most loyal of subjects..."

"I was loyal once to your dream of a united and equal Cybertron, a world where no bot suffered as a slave. And then you changed and I watched the world suffer, enslaved by you and the war you declared, instead of the corrupted high council. The world of today is the one I wanted – the one we all wanted. We have succeeded where you failed. You twisted depravity knows no end. You would truly snuff out the spark of this youngling for your lack of understanding."

"Soundwave, I'm afraid you don't understand."

"I'll tear your spark from your frame, Megatron. Let go of that child at once."

"I can't see why you would possibly care about this youngling," Megatron growled. And Cybershock felt his grip tighten around her even more. "She's Knockout's young one. Not yours."

"The younglings are the future," Soundwave answered, his voice just as strong as before, and he advanced toward the larger bot fast, without the tiniest hint of backing down. "They belong to new Cybertron. They will grow up in a world without fear, and place free from you!"

"I have wanted to fight against you again for a long time, Soundwave. Fist to fist and face-plate to face-plate. Just like we fought in the good old days of Kaon! So much better for two bots of our history, than our recent little scrap in the crystal cave!"

"You attacked me from behind! Like a coward! Tried to break my neck before I caught an intake..."

"An early attempt to right my wrongs. And there will be another were you are concerned, be assured."

"That child did nothing to you!"

"You cannot judge the things you do not understand!"

"Put. Her. Down." Soundwave's voice was grating with his rage, as he took another step. And Megatron just laughed a second, before he dropped the youngling to the street.

Cybershock had not expected to be dropped like that. And she gasped, an intake knocked from her frame as she hit the ground on her knees, which scrapped on the metal of the road, kept rough to give traction to alt-mode tires. Megatron had clearly not meant to drop her at all, because he lurched forward not a second after, about to scoop her up again with another wicked snarl.

But Soundwave was faster, perhaps because he was smaller – and he surely had to have been younger too. His frame collided hard with Megatron's at once, a fist striking the huge bot's chest panel with enough precision to cause him to gasp and sputter for a second or two. Soundwave followed through at once with a kick and another one right after, leaving dents in the huge silver bot's frame. And Megatron retaliated quickly, slamming a heavy fist into the side of Soundwave's upper body with a loud and heavy crash, making him stumble backward two steps before he easily caught his balance again.

Cybershock had watched bots in their training matches before so many times. Her carrier enjoyed training with the others of her former team. And though she was much smaller than any of the bots she fought against in the training gym, Cybershock knew well by then, she would easily smash the tail pipe of anybot who dared to call her helpless or weak. Just days ago, sitting on the floor in the corner of the training gym and out of the way, she'd watched as her carrier put Bulkhead onto the floor, by simply tripping him up with one spinning kick, before she promptly jumped onto his chest panel to kneel on it for a count of three. She'd seen Smokescreen and Bumblebee punch and kick each other safely but still both so clearly determined to win, until one of them had simply given up. Wheeljack's thing was so clearly fighting for more with short range weapons then his fists and his feet. And she'd seen him use them well, defeated anybot that dared to challenge him on the training mats - Soundwave included and that was apparently impressive.

But those matches had always just been training. It was always something bots did for recreation, fitness and even simply for fun. Cybertronians, it seemed so clear, might have had an almost inborn instinct to fight – or least it seemed they did when they got a little older. Never before had Cybershock even seen bots fighting like this. Megatron was certainly not just messing around, and neither was Soundwave. Their frames slammed together, fist to face-plate and foot to chest panel and side seam, until energon streamed from various places on both of their bodies. There was a sound of something snapping, and whatever that something was, it sounded important. Soundwave yelled for just a second with pain, but still neither bot stopped. And Cybershock, sitting up on the edge of the road, too nervous to move much further, watched them, horrified and realizing that Soundwave was clearly losing.

Soundwave had been a pit fighter once. More than one bot had mentioned it a time or two. And Cybershock may not have known exactly what that entailed, but she knew it meant he was someone a bot may not have wanted to be on the wrong side of. And though he'd always been just a nearly silent and tech bot in all the time she'd known him, she could almost imagine he must have once been downright dangerous. But she knew too, just as well that it had been centuries since his time in the fighting pit. And Soundwave was all too clearly just slightly out of shape and very out of practice.

He'd kept up for a while, or had even been ahead in the brawl. He'd managed to wrap his long dangerous cables from somewhere inside his frame, around Megatron's legs, and cause him to fall, with a thunderous crash. And the kicks and the fast heavy blows he rained on him were certainly impressive. But soon, it was he getting hit far more, and harder than ever. The cables let go, and Soundwave fell hard to the ground once onto his knees. In only a second he'd gotten up again, but this time he was knocked flat onto his face-plate.

"You should knew well, Soundwave to never challenge me," Megatron roared. And with one fast move, he'd grabbed his oppionant hard by his shoulders, flinging him just as quickly across the ground, where he fell a third time, in a halfway crumpled heap close to the youngling.

"Cybershock," Soundwave mumbled, clearly shocked that she was still standing there outside near the road. "Get inside. Go! You need to notify the police."

"S... Soundwave..." Cybershock cried. And though she tried to avoid it, her simply word turned at once to tears all over again. Soundwave was questionable in character as far as Cybertron was concerned. She knew just as well as she knew too many other things about the world already. But he was a friend to her creator, and Firestorm – another grown up bot she choose to look up to – loved him. He was soon to be a real Autobot, switching sides just like her creator had once done. And to her, all of those things were enough to make him decent in her book. She'd always been just a little bit afraid of him, keeping her distance where she might have talked easily to most anyone else, mumbling quite polite hellos when the others around her did, because it was... well... polite. She felt bad for it now, that she had never been truly nice to him, when she was to anyone else."

"Run back to your carrier," Soundwave said, gasping hard and winded. And he gestured toward the building doors.

"I will right my every wrong!" Megatron raged. "Every one of them. Including you Soundwave. Including that youngling, and Knockout just as soon as he comes looking for his baby. And I won't stop there. Shockwave is next. And there are still living troopers. And..."

The huge bot lunged at Soundwave again, fist poised for another hard, and probably dangerous blow right against his chest panel, which was already dented so badly and bleeding energon all over him. But he stopped both his rant and the swing of his first right in the middle of everything, staring up instead toward the sky, with horror on his face-plate.

Cybershock turned too look as well, and and she was certain Soundwave did too.

The figure flying across the sky earlier – though it seemed suddenly so long ago now – was back. And with furious beating of it's huge wings, it came much closer than it had before, quickly swooping lower in the air, and right toward the ground. A predacon! Cybershock recognized it then, as it come close enough to see it's beast form. It roared loudly enough to shake the windows partway up in buildings on both sides of the roadway. And energon fuelled fire bellowed from it's open mouth, as it circled once, low overhead.

The predacon landed on the road with one hard noise as it's whole enormous body hit at once. The beast did not waste a second. Leaping at Megatron in one great jump, it knocked him clean off his feet, where he landed backward cracking his head on the opposite walkway. The large bot screamed, a noise Cybershock was shocked to hear from him. And she cringed, watching in terror as the predacon all but destroyed him in only a couple of moments. There was more noise of screaming and yelling, a terrible curse and a mumbled threat on the creature's life. But soon there was nothing but a silver unmoving silver well mauled frame socked in energon on the metal ground.

"Is he...? Is he...?" Cybershock mumbled shaking, crying and trying hard to ask if Megatron was dead. But she could barely manage to speak.

She watched the creature turn then, and she saw it advance toward her in slow steps. It's head swung back and forth just as slowly as it walked, and out behind it, it's erogenous and clearly heavy tail, one obviously capable of lethal damage in itself, swung from one side to the other. Cybershock was just about to scream again, as it stopped walking to stand right over her, it's read and dark silverish head just a foot from hers.

She shut her optics tightly, sure she might just be about to be roasted by it's energon fire, just as sure she could do not a thing to help herself, and far too fully frozen with terror to move regardless. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. She opened her optics again, dismayed, to find the huge prediction simply sniffing at her frame, before it pawed her gently with a powerful clawed hand.

The beast transformed then. She had never had any idea at all that the predacons had bot modes. And this one's was massive and powerful. He backed up a step, extending a hand with such obvious doubt and hesitation. The youngling reached up to take up, just as slow and hesitant herself.

"Th... thank... y... you..." she mumbled, still shaking hard as tears streamed down her face-plate. She looked to her left, where Soundwave lay still as anything half on the walkway and half on the street. "S... Soundwave is... hurt..."

"Cybershock!" the voice of her carrier all but screamed somewhere behind her.

The youngling turned slowly, to see her standing in front of their building doors. Her creator was close beside her, sitting on his mobility cart, without even having bothered to do up his seat belt. They'd been there for a while, at least a couple of minutes. That was obvious. But the youngling knew, in the chaos they'd have no hope at all of reaching her. So... that had been why Soundwave had yelled to her to run to her carrier then...

"Primus, slagging scrap this could have been bad!" her carrier muttered, her tone still close to screaming it all out instead of just talking. "What were you doing out here. Tonight, of any night to venture on out of the house! Primus, Cybershock, don't you ever ever do that again!"

"Mama..." Cybershock said. And she wanted to say more, mostly in apology and promises to indeed never do that again. But she just burst out sobbing again instead, her face-plate at once hidden against her carrier's chest panel, just as soon as she was lifted from the walkway and up into her arms, clearly without regard at all for how heavy she was.

"You're safe," her carrier's voice said, obvious shaking then she tried so clearly just as hard to stop it. "We found you."

Cybershock lifted her head again after a moment. She wanted to hug her creator as well, just like she had already hugged, and been hugged by, her carrier. But he was busy, still sitting on his cart, with a scanner in his hand, he'd driving closer to where Soundwave had fallen, and was assessing him carefully with the scanner. Cybershock knew at once to let his entire attention fall on his work, because that was so important then. So her gaze travelled instead back toward the predacon, who simply stood where he was, appearing to contemplate something.

"Who is...?" the youngling tried to question, still barely able to speak a word.

"Who is that?" her carrier said, supplying the question her youngling had been unable to make her vocallizer ask. And she gave a small, anxious hint of a smile in spite of the mess all about them. "We call him Predaking." Cybershock watched her as she looked, with a strange expression in the predicon-in-bot-mode's direction. "His people's story is a long and strange one. And some bots want to fear them as beasts and monsters... the fear is hardly unfounded I suppose. But tonight this one did something heroic regardless of all that."

"Soundwave is... alive?" Cybershock almost didn't want to ask the question, because she feared the answer. The bot still wasn't moving even a tiny bit.

"He's alive," her creator said in answer. He looked up for only a second from the screen of his scanner- just long enough to smile assurance at the youngling, before he fell fully into his 'medic mode' and went on speaking. "He'll need urgent transport to the medbay. His injuries don't appear to be life threatening, though some are certainly bad. I would guess he might need surgery on his cracked chest panel. And he's lost consciousness from complete rapid onset system shock."

"What about Megatron?" Cybershock heard her carrier ask her creator after a moment. And she saw him shrug slightly at first in reply, which all made it clear that huge silver stranger was hardly a pressing priority for either one of them.

"He's alive for the moment, but barely so." Cybershock's creator sounded so oddly conflicted as he answered slowly after scanning the huge and badly damaged bot. "Not even a bot of his physical strength has a good chance of surviving transport."

* * *

"Thanks for letting me come with you for a minute," Cybershock said. She smiled a little, still so badly shaken from the terrible events of the night before. And Firestorm smiled back, holding the youngling gently by the hand while the two of them walked together into the main entryway of the hospital.

Firestorm only nodded, before she stumbled badly, her foot catching on a think rubber mat just inside the sliding door. And she grabbed quickly for the door frame with her free hand, steadying herself, before she walked slowly over the mat, still using the door for balance.

"Need some help?" the youngling asked her. The white and yellow bot with the nearly constant smile might just have seemed impossibly awkward and clumsy for an adult bot, in the optics of some many in the city. But Cybershock knew very well it wasn't her fault her processor was damaged once, and many bots were needlessly ignorant. Cybershock had always just helped her whenever she saw her and saw a need to offer, just like she had always so easily helped her own creator in a similar state.

"I'm good," the older bot said, and her usual smile covered her face-plate as she spoke so cheerfully. She explained, quite simply, that the rubber of that mat, or anything like it, was just so sort and squishy, it made it a tricky thing to walk well on. And Cybershock just nodded, understanding at once, because it certainly made a lot of sense.

"And no problem at all on letting you come along," Firestorm added then quickly, addressing the subject they'd been about to discuss when she nearly tripped and feel. "I talked to your creator earlier. He told me you wanted to go. Said it might just be good to let you."

"Firestorm?" Cybershock spoke hesitantly now. And she stopped walking, right in the middle of the entryway.

"Yes?" Firestorm questioned at once, pausing to let the youngling speak again.

"Soundwave is awake again by now, right?"

"Yeah." Firestorm led Cybershock to a bench against in front of a large window that looked out to the courtyard outside. And when she sat down just as soon as the youngling did.

"He was awake not long after he got here," she continued on explaining. Firestorm was another bot who had always talked to Cybershock, just like she was almost a grown up, and could understand things, because of course she really could. So Cybershock in turn just smiled a little, listening to her carefully, as she went on speaking. "He didn't want to be in the medbay. Wanted me to take him home instead. We all saw that coming. He's looking much better though." She paused then again and looked Cybershock right in her optics. "How 'bout you though my little friend? How are you doing today?"

"Me?" Cybershock questioned, probably sounded quite ridiculous in doing so. It surprised her that someone had asked her that question, because she'd noticed hours before that no one had yet at all. But Firestorm just nodded, and the look she gave showed that she might have truly been interested.

"I'm... okay I think," Cybershock said slowly, thinking hard as she did, about exactly how she could explain herself properly. "I wasn't hurt at all, if that's what you mean. Except... I don't think that's what you mean at all. I'm... happy I'm alive because last night I wondered for a while if today I wouldn't be anymore. But... I'm kinda sad too. I guess because I'm still scared and nervous, and I don't know what to think and what to do. And I can't talk to any of others really, because none of them have tried to talk to me about it all yet and I don't think anyone will... not even my creator or my carrier." Cybershock stopped talking for a moment, and turned to look out the big window behind her. Slowly she spoke again, mostly just musing out loud. "I... I think they all mean so well. They think that if they just say nothing about it, don't let me talk about any of it either... then last night night just go away, at least for me. It won't though. That's just not how memories work. I'm just a bit too old now for that trick to work."

"You're the smartest little youngling I've ever met yet," Firestorm said. And Cybershock smiled then, because she felt like she'd been acknowledged as a bot with real feelings and opinions, instead of just redirected - as if that was still even possible.

"Of course I am," Cybershock said, grinning then as she gave a little laugh and looked up at Firestorm's optics. She let herself change the subject entirely because it was on her own terms that it was changed so quickly. "My creator and carrier are both very smart, so why wouldn't I be just as smart as they are?" Her smile grew bigger than, and she hugged Firestorm happily, before she added with confidence, "Soundwave is one of the smartest bot's ever. Or at least that's what I've always heard. And you aren't dumb. You two might just have a youngling with the greatest processor ever one day!"

"Maybe," Firestorm said slowly in reply. But Cybershock saw the strange sad look on her face-plate. And silently she wondered why anyone would possibly be sad over such a thing, when most bots would be happy.

"Hey, Cybershock?" Firestorm said slowly. The two of them had gotten up from the bench had started to walk again.

"Yes?" the youngling bot asked, politely. She stopped walking again when Firestorm stumbled, this time over nothing obvious at all. She barely seemed to use her walking frame at all anymore at least inside. And though that did mean she could fall, Cybershock was happy for her trying anyway.

"You can always talk to me, you know," Firestorm said. And the youngling saw her smile then as she caught herself easily using the door frame of a supply closet to hold onto for a second. "You're right of course. Things won't just kind of go away and disappear if you just pretend it never happened."

Cybershock smiled brighter then, a grin to match the one so often seen Firestorm's face-plate. And she stopped walking again only because the other bot had stopped. They stood in front of a partly open door on the main hospital ward. Firestorm walked inside the room at once, holding the youngling by the and hand pulling her in gently along with her. Cybershock stepped closer to the older bot, and for a second she just looked around the small hospital room, realizing at once that she was both uneasy and curious and that both were probably okay things to be. And she was surprised at once, when Firestorm, quite strangely began to laugh and shake her head – just the way grown bots seemed to do when they had no idea how else to react to a thing they had heard or seen.

"What are you doing out of your recharge station?" she said a second later to Soundwave, who was sitting up in a chair by the window, busy reading something from a data pad. "Ratchet told you quite clearly to stay in there!"

"You brought Cybershock here?" Soundwave sounded surprised and confused, just judging by the tone of his voice. And the youngling, still standing close against Firestorm's side, smiled just slightly in his direction.

"She wants to talk with you a moment," Firestorm explained. And Cybershock, stepping just slightly away from the older bot, nodded slowly. "Knockout said I can certainly borrow her for a short while, just as long as I give her back."

She laughed just a little, the way so many grown bots seemed to like to over such outrageous and not funny jokes, shared between them in regards to small younglings. Soundwave though was clearly only confused by the ridiculous joke. And this caused Cybershock to giggle just a little. She turned her face-plate back quickly to a look of seriousness though, and took a few slow, still slightly hesitant steps toward the much bigger bot.

"Hello," she said, speaking just as slowly as she had walked. But she smiled then, and just stood still, trying hard not to fall into her usual habit of rocking on the fronts of her little feet.

"Hello," Soundwave answered back, smiling slightly. His smile was strange somehow. And Cybershock just watched him for a second, until she realized quickly that it was simply the damage to the face-plate that must have been to blame for that.

"I am... sorry!" Soundwave exclaimed suddenly after less than a second. His optics looked a just bit wider as he hands gestured, with a look that seemed to mean despair and hopelessness, vaguely toward his own face-plate.

"Why?" Cybershock asked at once. And she remembered only after she'd always spoken again, to wonder if it might have been impolite somehow to ask him why he was sorry – even if she really didn't understand any reason at all, which she honestly did not.

"You.. may well be... horrified," Soundwave answered. His voice was slightly shaky, and his optics fell on the cover which always used to hide his face-plate, and now instead left laying close by on the worktable that also held his small stack of datapads. Cybershock understood then that he had forgotten all about it. And it made her sad to think it should have mattered.

"Nope," Cybershock explained, speaking with confidence now, and feeling just as confident as she walked forward to stand even closer. "And if anyone else ever is they need a good kick in the tailpipe, and an even better talking to!"

"Thank you..."

"You're welcome." Cybershock stayed standing exactly where she was for a second in silence, before she realized she had indeed began to rock on her feet again, despite her best efforts not to. And she made herself stop doing it at once.

"I... wanted to thank you," she continued. And she felt her voice grow even bolder the more she talked. "I'd have been dead now I think, if you hadn't come to save me Too bad you got scrapped doing it though."

"I am... not that easy to destroy." Soundwave smiled again.

"Why were you outside so late, anyway?" Cybershock asked, curious simply curious. She reminded herself just a second later, that it was not always acceptable to question grown bots on their reasoning for such things. But Soundwave just smiled a little again, and appeared to consider for a second.

"I... sometimes like to fly alone at night," he said slowly. "The world is quiet, or mostly so, and I can think a while. Last night though was different, because I heard noise and screaming. Never good to hear - though especially so in the dead of night..."

* * *

Knockout got himself off his mobility cart easily enough. And sitting for a moment on the recharge station he shared with his mate, he managed to plug the machine in to change without assistance, by leaning forward carefully from his sitting position on the edge, to do so using outlet just within his reach. Arcee lay on on her own side of the recharge station, with her optics closed and Cybershock unmoving in her arms. And so, he simply gave a small shake of his head, and lay down just as carefully as he could, so as not to bother either one.

"Welcome back," Arcee mumbled, sleepily beside him. Her optics opened a little, and she smiled just slightly. Knockout however responded with a tiny hint of a frown across his face-plate.

"I woke you up," he said in whispers. "I didn't mean to do that."

"I wasn't in recharge." Arcee frowned then herself. And moving slowly, she gently shifted the youngling a little, so that her arms were free and little bot lay flat on her back between them. "You've got to be kidding. After last night, I'm not sure I'll sleep again... ever."

"You will," Knockout answered, in what he hoped was convincing assurance. He held out a hand, which she took at once, both of them reaching easily over their recharging child. "We both will, eventually." He looked intently at his mate, watching her tired, disturbed optics, and mumbled in sad realization, "I should not have gone to my duty shift tonight..."

"Of course you should have gone," Arcee replied, smiling again. She looked less uneasy by the second as they just lay holding each other's hands. "Bots still get sick and injured. The hospital needs you... the younglings on your ward love you! We were fine here. We sat a while and watched a holovid. Then Cybershock wanted me to play with her. We raced her little cars around for a bit in the living room, but her spark just wasn't in it... Bulkhead stopped by to check in. Wheeljack come by not long after..."

"They really are all such good bots," Knockout said seriously. "Sometimes I'm still surprised to remember I have good friends now. Real ones who won't stab me in the back, over... well any number of reasons really..."

"I see we have a... small visitor tonight, he mumbled with a hint of a chuckle and a slight shake of his head. And his optics went to their youngling, still in sound recharge, now flat on her back with arms and legs sprawled everywhere. Knockout gently lifted the youngling's left arm, tucking it in carefully against her frame, that he could move further in and not feel as though he might fall right off sometime in the night.

"She just couldn't recharge by herself tonight," Arcee explained. She moved the younglings other arm and one of her legs, slowly so as not to wake her. "It's perfectly understandable I should think."

"She couldn't recharge by herself because she panicked in trying? Or she couldn't because you panicked yourself in trying to let her?" Knockout asked pointedly. But still he smiled, not exactly minding in the slightest that the youngling was close to both of them that night.

"A good bit of both," Arcee admitted. Cybershock whimpered then just a little, and her body flopped slightly over to rest against her carrier, before she quieted at once and stayed still, returning right to recharge.

"You okay?" Knockout asked his mate, concerned a long moment later, when she'd been silent for what seemed a bit too long, right along with their child, with her optics still open and obviously awake.

"I'm fine," answered slowly. And her tone was contemplative. She shook her head just a little and said, "It's still almost impossible to believe Megatron is really gone this time."

"Once and for all," Knockout answered. And though he was of course dedicated to the Autobot cause now just as much as any of the team, it still surprised him just how okay he was with that.

Ratchet had truly done the best he could so to save the life of the former Decepticon leader. He'd explained quickly over protests from half the medical team, including Knockout and even Bumblebee, that to not do so was simply not the way of a medi-bot worthy of the title. (And Knockout had surprised himself then too, by understanding entirely well, that his mentor was right.) But despite his greatest efforts, the former tyrannical warlord had died anyway. He'd survived transport, proving Knockout wrong in that. But he'd gone that long only to die of massive injuries minutes after arriving in the medbay.

It had hardly been surprising. Not one of the medi-bots had thought he'd live an hour once they'd seen him. Still, once he had, sure enough passed on, they'd committed his body to the smelting pit within another hour. Because it seemed to be that while no medi-bot alive would leave even him to die, little stopped them from wanting a hasty end for the frame of a bot too well known to come back, now that he'd passed on despite them.

Yes, he had been entirely mad. And his coming into the city in the first place had only been an act fuelled by that utter madness he'd so clearly begun to suffer from. Still there was so little to be done about such insanity – short, the medical had reasoned, of possibly locking him away for centuries for their own safely and possibly his own. His actions though, insane or not, had been too much forgive for bots whose world had already suffered so much. And that as understood among them all, with little discussion needed on the whole matter.

A tiny hand grabbing sleepily for his own free one, made Knockout look down at once. And his optics fell on Cybershock, now just slightly awake, though mostly still recharging lightly. She rolled a little in her sleepiness, until one half turn later, her small body was against his where it had started against Arcee's instead.

"Daddy..." the youngling mumbled, obviously so happy to see him, because that night she'd missed his coming home. Her optics, tiny slits of bright blue a second before, began to quickly open fully. And Knockout let his mate's hand go so that he could hug his small daughter for a moment.

"Go back into recharge, my girl," he said calmly. "And I'll see you in the morning. I'll take you to the playground and we'll try for that push on the swing."

"...Kay..." the little bot mumbled already back to recharge in under a second.

Cybershock had escaped from her encounter with the deranged former Decepticon leader without a single dent to her frame, and hardly even a scratch on her paint. But she had stared her own near passing from life, clear in the face-plate. And that, she would live with for her entire life. Knockout stiffened with sudden anger at the very thought of that. And not wanting to wake the tiny bot that recharged, sill rested close beside him, he forced away his growing rage before he began to shake and tremble from it.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the team is going to grant Soundwave Autobot status now," Arcee mumbled, with a tiny smile on her face-plate. "He's certainly got my vote after all he did today for our baby girl..."

Knockout nodded his head a little in reply. And he opened his mouth, just about to speak. But a tiny squeal from the youngling beside him made him stop at once, to look at her instead. He hoped the youngling would quickly settle again right back into sound recharge. And for a second it looked to him like she would. But then she squealed again with panic, and that tiny squeal turned quickly to a small weak scream. Her tiny frame stiffened in seconds, and with her optics still closed tightly, she kicked her feet widely while her hands smacked horribly against her creator's armour in her obvious confusion and panic.

"Hey, hey you're okay," Knockout said to her calmly and slowly. He held her body tightly against his trying hard to calm her. And after some fumbling about, he grabbed both of her hands in one of his, holding them lightly to stop her from smacking at him. "You okay. I've got you my girl."

"Let'me'go... let'me'go..." the youngling mumbled, optics still closed tight and obviously caught up in some nightmarish flashback. Knockout was of course not holding onto her all that hard. He would have easily let her roll away from him if that;s what she wanted to do. But still in recharge, the youngling was confused, and unable to free herself simply because of it, she only screamed again before tears began to fall down her face-plate.

"Okay... not working..." Knockout mumbled almost almost silently in growing despair as his spark dropped hard and his fuel tank flipped.

Gently he rolled the youngling's small body way from him instead of holding her. Her hands had stopping flying out to hit and smack in perceived self defence. And flopped easily over into her back again, she but lay too still then, frozen and stiff with her terror as she just went on screaming.

"Cybershock," Knockout said, calling her name firmly but gently, while lightly rubbed a hand against her shoulder panel and shook her just a little. "Come on, my girl. I think you've go to wake up."

"... dun'wanna die..." Cybershock mumbled, just barely audible and through shaking tears. "Wh... wha'did I'do..."

"You're alright," Knockout said, still calm as he could manage to stay. And he watched carefully, as the youngling's little blue optics finally snapped open slowly.

"Daddy..." Cybershock cried still shaking hard. She rolled back over again, pressing her small frame tightly against his and making in clearly in that she wanted to be held tightly now, just as much as she had fought against exactly that a moment before.

"Don't let me go," she shrieked horribly and still shaking, just as soon as he'd quickly pulled her against his frame. Immediately she buried her face-plate against his body armour, and her hands grabbed for his in panic. "Don't let me go... please don't let me go!"

"Okay... okay..." Knockout said, speaking to his youngling still slowly, while he held her tightly against him. It certainly seemed to take a while, but eventually the trembling of her tiny frame all but stopped entirely.

"Do you want to get up for moment" he asked her once she was calmer. He thought back his own endless nightmares and the worst kind of terrible flashbacks, remembering at once how he would so often instantly leave his recharge station, in order to stare out a window, wander the darkened hallways, or turn a light, to grab his drawing screen and working on sketching something pointless – all just to think of something, anything else at all, but the fear of something he should knew he should have known could never hurt him then. Or, at least that was how it had been before his damage and disability and the start of a time when getting up at will just simply wouldn't work.

"No thanks," Cybershock said, her voice quiet and sleepy. "I... think I'm good now"

The youngling bot fell back into recharge a moment later, her body still resting against that of her creator. And he held her against him gently for another moment or two, before he slowly shifted her, with help from Arcee, to let her lay between them again flat on her back.

"I've done a little thinking," Knockout said to his mate, again in hushed tones over their recharging child.

And Arcee looked at him, smiling, her expression curious as she fussed a little with the recharge station covers, pulling them up over Cybershock's frame to keep her warm enough. Slowly she smiled, still so obviously shaken up from their youngling's horrid nightmare.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Everything in life can be so... fleeting. We just never know what's next. When anything will change without a second's warning..."

"That's true.." Arcee reflected right back quietly. Cybershock rolled slowly against her, still in recharge, and Arcee just chuckled silently, holding her gently. "We were all so busy with a war to win, and one day it just... ended. You and me just kind of... happened. And then..." Her optics went to the youngling in her arms, and she grinning. "Just look what we made..."

"Is that really something that would make you happy?" Knockout asked serious and smiling all at once while his optics left hers in order to gesture down at the youngling. "To have another one eventually?"

"Yes," Arcee answered simply, and she said nothing more about any of it.

"Okay," Knockout replied, with confidence that had come seeming from nowhere at all. And he nodded once in the dim light of the room, his simply reply meant firmly as agreement instead of any further questioning. And he watched his bondmate's face-plate as she stared a second in disbelief and shock. Slowly a smile broke through her shock, and that turned fast to a full on grin at him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes/ I really do hope this chapter actually makes sense, in terms' or its order. I've got myself into the fustrating situation of having far too many bits and pieces to put into this same point in the whole story plot and simply trying got work out what to place here and what will come directly after. As a result this chapter was also surprisingly frustrating to write and edit. Finally I think I've got it... and... look... and update! Finally. Haha. Sorry for the wait.**

 **A commenter asked in a recent review, if I plan for Knockout and Arcee to adopt Cybershock. To be honest I was slightly confused by this at first, because of course she's their daughter in first place. Then I realized you might have meant Switchblade, and it all made sense! I have a different plan for that little bot, but no worries... it's not a sad plan.**

Bulkhead knew very well he couldn't sing – or at least he shouldn't even try to do so unless he wanted any bot within five hundred metres to run the other way and fast. But that didn't stop him from trying anyway on that particular day. No one was around, out and about in the hallways of what was once the Autobot base of operations. And Bulk' loudly sang verse two of Miko's favourite death metal track, because the song had been in his head all morning long. He tried dancing too – though that was just as bad as his signing and perhaps even worse. And finally he stopped his dance moves, to play an air guitar solo on the wet mop he held in both hands, and should have been using instead to mop the floor of a mess he himself had made, spilling (thankfully) washable paint over the tiles when he'd tripped over his own big feet and nearly fallen, while on his way to put it away in his office.

"Are you... okay?" a voice said somewhere behind him, in a tone clearly meant to be mock doubt. It was someone clearly young based on the voice. And whoever it was, the speaker was confidant for one so very small. Bulkhead dropped the mop to the floor at once, watching water splash just a little from its still wet cleaning head, and refused, stubbornly, to feel even a hint of embarrassment over being caught behaving so ridiculously.

"Absolutely fine," he mumbled, less confidant then he wanted to sound. And he picked up the dropped mop at once, gesturing to said mop, now held again in his hands. "Just... moppin' the floor."

A bright optic'd dull green youngling stepped from her hiding place around a corner, giggling. And Bulkhead recognized her at once, remembering her as first Ratchet's and then Knockout's badly damaged patient – the youngling survivor of a recent explosion that should never have happened. But for as damaged as she'd been when he last run into her, she was certainly much better now, and stronger too. One arm, the one Bulk' knew was sadly blown apart almost entirely, was still bound tightly against the side of her frame. But she used her one remaining hand to hold corner of the wall lightly, holding her balance that way as she laughed harder. And she clearly stood perfectly fine on her own two feet.

"Aww," she said, still giggling with youngling amusement, while she pretended to pout a second with her one good hand now on her hip. "I was hoping for another... umm... mop solo!"

Bulkhead may certainly have tried hard just to hold a straight face, after the youngling had caught him flat out goofing off, as he'd been doing. But that silly comment from her did him in entirely. Unable to look serious even a second longer, Bulk' burst out laughing, far harder than he'd laughed in too long to remember. Instantly he began to 'play' the mop again, because it was simply all too funny. And beside him, the small youngling, who could obviously do much less with only one hand, and lacked anything to use as her own pretend instrument besides, simply stood rocking hard forwards and backwards almost well enough to make humans at any Earth metal show look twice because of her talents.

"Rock on, kid," Bulkhead said, finally giving up his improvising with the mop when it became clear the youngling was growing tired from her moving so quickly. And when she looked at him, confusion clear in her bright blue optics, he explained grinning, "just something we used to say on Earth."

"You were one of the bots stationed on that organic alien planet?" The little green bot questioned, with her optics lightening up before her question was even answered. And just as soon as Bulkhead nodded in confirmation, they lit up for more.

"Neat," she said. And for a moment, she just stood. Finally she looked up at him again, optics wide, and excited, questioning hopefully, "you must have some great war stories from Earth! Can you tell me some one day?"

"Sure," Bulk' promised, shrugging a little. "But I'm not the best bot at telling stories... even true ones."

"That's okay," the little bot answered, grinning. "I still wanna hear them anyways!"

"You've gotten so much better already," Bulkhead commented, smiling in the youngling's direction, when she fell silent a moment. "I guess you''ll probably be leaving here soon."

"I might be here for a while," the little bot answered. And for just a second, her face-plate looked sad, before she quickly smiled again and shrugged just a little and unevenly because of her destroyed arm. "I've still got nowhere to go."

Bulkhead remembered in an instant that he knew that already. And though he might have hoped the news had become better by then, it clearly had not. He felt bad then, foolish for his off handed comment, and terrible because he could easily have made a youngling cry. But the green youngling just looked up at him, leaning again, against the wall, and shrugged again with calmness on her face-plate.

"It doesn't matter, Bulkhead," she said, still having obviously remembered his name. "I'll get a stand – in creator eventually. Arcee says that's the plan now. "And whoever that is, he's gotta be ten times better than the one I had."

"You got a good spark full of hope, kid," Bulk answered, smiling again, impressed by the youngling. "I like hope. It's what really let us win the war in the end."

"Scrapheap didn't want me," the little bot said, so matter of fact it was sad. But Bulkhead just stood listening, while she continued on. "I guess he never really did. One day someone will, Ratchet and Knockout both say I'm a decent little bot."

"You seem like a pretty decent kid to me," Bulkhead said.

A bench had been put in that hallway recently, mostly to serve as part of the new decor that made the old base look for 'inviting' for refugees, inside on all sorts of orders of business. But it was comfortable too. Bots certainly sat on it from time to time, along with any others set up here and there around the hallways in the place. And without much need to think about it, Bulk' lead the youngling to the bench nearby, because of course she was still far from truly strong even if she certainly did look much better. He flopped down beside her just as soon as she'd scrabbled up onto the bench to sit, because he knew he needed to rest his still slightly injured leg for at least a short while.

"So, what are you doing off the youngling ward anyway?" Bulk' questioned, partly curious and most concerned to find her truly on her own outside of it.

"I kinda might have escaped," the little bot replied. And her voice showed not a single hint of shame.

"Escaped? From a hospital ward?" Bulk' scolded mildly in dismay, though he'd easily guessed of course already that that exact thing must have happened. "Switchblade, you can't do that."

"Prob'ly not," the little bot just shrugged. Though her optics did show at least some regret for her actions then at least. "But I did anyways. I'm bored!"

"I'm gonna comm Knockout," Bulkhead said, decidedly slowly raising a hand to his commlink to do so. "I think he's on shift today. I'll let him know you're out here."

"It's not like I'm never goin' back," the youngling argued. She moved a little, pulling her legs up in front of her on the bench to sit with her head so casually resting on her knees, and a look of playful defiance on her face-plate "He's got other patients. I don't think he'll notice I'm gone before I'm back again."

"Doc-bots aren't s'pose to have favourite patients, but of course they do anyway, 'cause they're still just bots," Bulk' said. He shook his head just a little, strangely amused by this tiny bot. "Everyone knows you're probably his, or one of them at least. He'll notice any second now if he hasn't already." Bulk' chuckled then, adding with only slight exaggeration, "then he'll probably call around just as fast as he can, looking for any bot with the authority to put this whole place on lock down!"

"I just figured this place might be interesting," The youngling said. She gestured with her remaining hand, toward a hallway leading away from where they currently sat. "What's down there?"

"The lift," Bulkhead shrugged a little. "A couple of storage rooms..."

"Well... what's downstairs then? If there's a lift there's gotta be a basement."

"Of course there's a basement." Bulk' just shrugged again, hardly finding the place even half as interesting as the little bot clearly did. "The training gym's down there. And the blaster range. There's a big rec room... a bunch more storage... the housing office... the old Autobot brig..."

"Cells to hold prisoners?" the youngling exclaimed, so obviously intrigued by this as only a youngling could be. "Ooh, can you show me? Can we see the blaster range too?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because...," Bulkhead was about give an answer, but he had to admit to himself he had no idea at all what to say in reply to this sharp and stubborn little youngling, that would not simply lead to more arguments and questions. And he was entirely relieved, and not at all surprised, with he heard the familiar quiet hum of a well known mobility cart's small motor rolling slowly toward them.

"There you are, my Little Bot," Knockout said, driving the cart a little faster in their direction.

Beside him, strapped into to a strange complex sort of walking frame and bracing type contraption, with moving parts and sliders, his feet strapped into small footholds, and legs tightly fastened against movable and sliding lower bars, was another youngling bot. This one was clearly a fair bit old, at least half way grown. And where Bulk' certainly found his equipment alarming this young so clearly didn't think so at all, because he knew exactly how to walk well with it (it was easy to guess this very thing allowed him to stand well and to walk at all,) and he kept up just fine with the motorized cart.

"This is Turbocharge" Knockout explained to Bulkhead, with a tiny chuckle and a polite gesture toward the larger third frame youngling. "Another of my buddies on the youngling ward. I easily recruited this guy to help me search, when I realized we had a little one escape."

"Good practice with this walking support," the young bot said. And he grinned a proud youngling grin, even as he wiggled his right foot just as much as he clearly could, clearly becoming uncomfortable in the rigid support that held his leg in place.

"Hi Turbo!" said the green youngling, sitting on the bench.

Bulkhead chuckled slightly with the easy realization that course, because both younglings had been in the ward together for some time already, they were likely decent playmates. And sure enough the bigger youngling strapped into his standing support, waved at the littler one on the bench, with a smile on his face-plate, while continued to shift and wiggle around slightly with his clearly growing discomfort.

"Hold on, Turbo," Knockout said gently. And he turned his cart a little so he could sit facing toward the young bot.

He unclipped the seat belt he wore over his lap (or least he wore when he bothered to fasten it all those days,) and learned froward just as far as he clearly could without losing his balance and falling. And with a calm kindness that Bulkhead would have guessed him once all but incapable of at all, Knockout then lifted the youngling's small foot from the foothold, just as soon as he'd unclipped the device that held it somehow. The young bot leaned forward then, badly, against the movable handlebars of his support set up. And it was clear in that that he couldn't have stood at all on his own .

Bulkhead sat a moment longer on the bench, with the smaller youngling beside him, watching sadly as Knockout unstrapped his helpless small patient's right leg from the fixed brace that held it steady, and gently redid the straps again, supporting part of the little bot's weight just as well as he could with his own slightly weaker arm, while he work with his stronger, obviously trying to improve the fit so he would be comfortable in the set up.

"How's that?" the red medi-bot asked, sitting himself back again, after he'd let the youngling stand again on his own the very best he clearly could.

"Better, thanks," Turbo answered. And Bulk' who'd felt bad just a moment before in simply watching him, knew he should never feel bad just by the smile the young bot flashed, despite his own condition.

"My creator is coming to see me today, and he's bringing my siblings to visit," the youngling said. And he grinned with his excitement, bouncing a little, his legs held steady while he did so, by the complicated frame. "I think this time I might just be able to play with my brothers and my sister!"

"I assume they are going to be here soon," Knockout questioned. And Bulkhead smiling, noticing easily that he spoke to this youngling, so clearly damaged so horribly, just as he did anyone else. Because just like Knockout himself, or Firestorm, or a handful of other damaged bots surfacing on their world as the ships returned home, damage, however badly it effected parts of his body, did nothing to lessen the power of his mind.

"Within half an hour," Turbo answered, still bouncing with his excitement. "Do you think I could go outside to wait for them? I like to be outside. It's such sunny day. And I want to surprise them all with how well I can walk with this."

"Go on out, Turbo," Knockout answered, smiling. "I'll come and talk to you and your creator in the courtyard in awhile."

"How fast can you go in that?" Bulkhead asked, curious. And he no longer felt bad for him at all. It was impossible to feel bad while that same bright grin covered the young bot's face-plate.

"Fast," the youngling called Turbocharge said, grinning. And to the looks of dismay that Bulk' exchanged with Knockout, he hurried forward down the empty hallway, his legs pushing his walking support frame forward as he made the motion of running in it.

"Turbo, be careful," Knockout called after him rolling ahead a short ways himself But he shock his head slightly as smiled right along with his warning. Because the hallway was wide and empty, and there really was little danger.

"Sure living up to his name," Bulkhead mused chuckling Knockout nodded a little.

"He is. And its wonderful to see it too. He's been in and out of the hospital since his ship landed a few years ago already. And I've known him just as long because of it." Knockout paused a moment, with a look of all too obvious mixed emotion on his face-plate. "That ship he was one was the same one that brought us so many sick and damaged bots... at least one in five in need of some kind of care just as soon as we could get to them. And I'd easily have to say Turbo was among the very worst of them.

Legs were both bent sideways and and one nearly backwards... couldn't bare any weight... no hope at all of ever standing up. No signal at all to any wiring below either one of his knee joints Forth repair last week and now he's running. I promised him he would one day."

"He doesn't seem to care that any running he's doing, is still all while strapped into that crazy contraption of his," Bulk' remarked, any last hints of his earlier pity on the youngling replaced now by simple admiration. And nearby, Knockout only chuckled again, so clearly pleased and proud himself.

"Usually he loves it. Because he's never run before, if this is the best he can do it's more than good enough in his mind, at least for now. It helps too that he's got a wonderful creator and carrier..." Knockout paused just a second again, this time to look, with obvious sadness at the youngling girl that still sat on the bench, obviously happy enough just to listen as the other bots converse a moment. Knockout shook his head then just a little, with a look on his face-plate of a bot thoroughly impressed, and said, "They have six younglings, I believe, including their badly damaged one. And it hardly takes a genius to see they love them all the same. Some bots messed up just half as bad as him would have been left to die on those ships because it might just seem functionalist attitudes follow them far and die hard. But the thought never crossed a single member of that family's mind, even if his creators did have so many more to love and care for."

Knockout rolled himself on the cart closer to the bench then. And when Bulk stood up, leaving the youngling sitting where she was and still obvious in need of some light rest, Knockout held his head up just as high as he could, to speak to bulkhead in slightly hushed tones then. "I considered asking the pair, in all seriousness, if they wanted another one - because they really are good bots and both said last year they'd be so happy if they could just have three more eventually! But Turbo's carrier is carrying again..." His words died out then, his thought never finished out loud. And he turned slightly, to look at the small green youngling.

"You can't just wander away from the ward like that" he said, rolling slowly toward her, smiling assurance even as he scolded her gently. "The moment I noticed I had a missing little patient, I worried something might have happened."

"Sorry, Dr. Knockout," the small green youngling answered back. And a comical sort of pout covered her face-plate, as she slid down slow from the bench and crept closer, to look up at the red bot, seated on his mobility cart.

"Hop on, Little Bot," Knockout answered, shaking his head, with some obvious degree of amusement in spite of himself, as he gestured with his optics toward his knees. "I'll give a lift back to the ward."

"Oh... kay..." the youngling answered slowly and frowning. And she walked closer to him with footsteps that suddenly resembled those of a bot facing execution.

"Can I take her for a while?" Bulkhead asked, deciding quickly. And inwardly he questioned his own sanity, in doing so, because really, he had not idea at all what he was doing or why. "She's been asking questions all about this old base. I figured I could give her the tour of the place." He looked down at the youngling then a second, grinning before he added, "I promised her some stories too."

He smiled to himself, when he saw the youngling's face-plate light up at once. And from his place, sitting on his cart, Knockout appeared to carefully consider a moment, and then another. His red optics went slowly to the youngling, and he looked her over carefully, before he slowly nodded his head just a little.

"I see no real harm in that," he answered, still thoughtful. "But..." he held up a hand then in a gesture of caution. "Be careful with her. She's looking better everyday, in indeed she is. But she's still got a long way to go."

* * *

"Walk back toward me," Ratchet called to Firestorm, who stood well across the courtyard from him.

The small white and yellow bot turned at once, from where she had stopped a moment before, facing toward a place where the fence had once stood, and quickly took a few careful bit steady steps back toward the old medic.

"Firestorm, run!" Ratchet called out suddenly, making a quick decision and laughing, confidant and grinning as he did.

"What?" Firestorm mumbled back in answer. She took a few more, more confidant steps then ever before. And shook her head, obviously convinced she hadn't heard him right.

"Run," Ratchet repeated, smiling assurance at her. "Let's see how well you can do it."

Firestorm's steps were still somewhat awkward and strange to watch, even though she very rarely if ever seemed to lose her balance entirely anymore – at least not so badly she could not quickly self correct and catch herself. And when they sped up, hesitantly at first, in her first real try at running since she'd been a child barely old enough to have remembered how, those awkward steps appeared more so than ever. But still she was doing it. And she quickly ran a good distance around the edge of what was once the fence line, before she stumbled badly over her own still not fully co-operating feet, and dropped hard to her knees, clearly on purpose before she fell onto her face-plate instead.

Ratchet felt bad then, at least slightly, worried he may just have set her back, pushing her without any warning that he was going to, because really he'd never planned to at all, and just sort of decided in a second. But Firestorm grinned the second she'd caught herself. And at once, she was up again, on her feet under her own power, having stood by bracing her hands against her knees and making her body work because she needed it to. And a second later she walked forward again, before immediately taking off again running slightly faster than she had the first time. She reached the old medic quickly. And that it seemed was the one reason she stopped that time, standing a long moment in front of him, just staring up at him, beaming a bright grin, just as though she'd struck rare gems out of nowhere.

"I haven't run like that since I was barely a third frame!" she said, still grinning.

"I know it," Ratchet answered, resting hand firmly on her shoulder panel, and smiling back at her.

"I never dreamed I'd ever one day reach this point..." Firestorm stood a moment, just glancing around the courtyard, happy and enjoining the fresh air of the afternoon. Her optics moved slowly back to the old bot, and she smiled again, before her looked turned serious and she mused under her intakes. "It's just too bad Soundwave couldn't come with me to rehab today. He could have seen me run for the first time in a century or more..."

"All the more disappointing for him perhaps, considering today was your very last session," Ratchet replied. And he smiled, waiting just a moment for her to realize exactly what it was he'd said.

"We're really... done?" Firestorm questioned, doubtful.

"There's nothing more I can really do for you rehab-wise," the old bot told her. "Nothing you can't just keep up now on your own. My advice to you from here is practice practice. Anything you want to try in life, try it. Never say you can't because we've seen just how much you really can do. I have no doubt, based on what I've seen since the cybermatter trials and even before that, that you'll just keep on getting stronger every day."

"Thank you, Ratchet. For everything."

"Ha. Well you're quite welcome of course. But it's not as if this is goodbye forever or anything. It's not as though you are off to live on an alien world. Surely you'll come see an old bot once in a while. At least you better." The old Autobot paused a second, chuckling. "Besides, I still need to visit you in order to get sweets."

"Of course, Ratchet. But still... thank you."

"Just doing my job," the old medic smiled as the two of them began to walk again, heading back inside. But Firestorm stopped abruptly once again, as soon as they had reached the doorway.

"Umm... Ratchet..." she said, her voice strangely hesitant. "Can I talk to about something, if you have a moment?"

"Oh, I think I have a few more to spare," Ratchet smiled, replying.

He put a hand on the mini-bot's shoulder panel again, and lead her the short distance to his office, beyond the information desk and the currently empty waiting room inside the doorway. And once inside the office, she dropped slowly, into the offered chair on the 'patient' side of his desk, with clear nervousness in her movements.

"What can I do for you then?" he questioned, cheerfully, offering her the dish of sweets from the edge of the desk as he usually did, surprised when this time, instead of her well known favourite iron one, she took a cobalt instead.

"I... I want to fly," Firestorm blurted out, clearly uneasy, after sitting silently a long moment in her chair just sucking distractedly on the sweet.

Ratchet, sitting down himself, in his own chair behind the desk reached into the small dish, choose a sweet and slowly opened its wrapper without even bothering to wonder what flavor it was he'd grabbed. And for a second he just sat, blinking, before he shifted his expression again, to look at the young bot, curious.

"I beg your pardon," he said, his tone a mix of mildly confused and apologetic.

"I want to be a flyer," Firestorm explained, surprising the medic at once with just how serious she looked as she spoke. She sat a second more, again just sucking silently on her sweet, before she continued on.

"I... I've been reading," she confessed, still as serious as ever. "Everything I could get my hands on from your open medical library and what's left of the public record. I'd always assumed growing up that I was a grounder because my creators were grounders and theirs were before them – and there was little use imaging I could be any different because I was what I was. Reading data pads these last few weeks though, I learned that may not be true!"

"It is certainly possible," Ratchet nodded, approaching the entire subject suddenly at hand, with professional caution. "Yes, you were built to be a grounder, because your creators were. It only makes sense for every bot to build a youngling to be like themselves, because we are most often just like our parents when it comes to things like a love of the feel for the road beneath us, or a need to lift off and fly for miles over mountains and rooftops. It always was a bit of a cultural thing too, way back in the golden age of Cybertron..." He paused then a second, shook his head a little, as he tended to so often do. And finally he smiled a little, once again. "Every now and then though a bot will come along that's different... one whose spark, for whatever reason just doesn't fit the general rule."

"Ratchet... do you think it's wrong?"

"Wrong for you to wish to be a flyer? No, I don't think it's wrong." The medi-bot shook his head again, just a little. And he huffed under his intake and frowned at her a moment, hoping to drive his point well home with a look alone. "But there's no reason to think it might actually be a good idea. Those short antidotes you can find in any of the remaining public records will sure tell you it can be done. And it certainly can. But that doesn't mean it's easy. The records don't tell you just how complicated it all really is. The ramming of your processor... the physical process of just learning how to fly in the first place... and for a mini-bot frame, one raised happily on the ground with just three small wheels and carbon fibre axles, to suddenly try supporting the extra weight of landing gear and wings... Firestorm, an airplane mode might look light when they are up in the air, but any of them weigh far more than any car! Your systems would adjust yes, and your spark would learn to compensate, but..." the old medic sat for a second just shaking his head, dismayed as ever by this young bot who never had stopped surprising him with her questions, and unexpected ambitions. "No... No. Firestorm it's just plain unwise."

The little white and yellow bot just sat still in her chair for a good long moment, with look on her face-plate that reminded the old medic of a disappointed youngling. He thought a second of a small bot who'd heard 'no' when they'd so clearly been expecting 'yes,' so much that the negative answer barely registered at all. But too slowly, it seemed it did register. Because she looked up at him for just a second more, disappointed and not even seeming bothered with hiding the fact. Finally she just smiled again – that typical bright grin that so often showed on her face-plate – before she got up from her chair.

"Thank you for your time and the answers to my questions," she said, cheerful as ever.

"Never a problem," Ratchet answered, smiling right back. "You know my door is always open to anyone, and that includes you of course. It always will." He stood up himself, showing her polite to the door of the office with a motion of his hand. Ans he gave one small chuckle as he did. "I'll be by the shop, sometime this week or next for my usual mixed bag of sweets."

"I'll have one ready for you," Firestorm promised. And she walked out of the office, looking pleased enough, and letting the door close behind her at once.

#####

Ratchet stood in front of the small window in the far wall of his office. And for several moments he just stood, staring out idly at a trio of young neutrals, who stood around in the courtyard outside laughing so hard over something they were clearly discussing, that one of them leaned forward, resting with his hands on his knees. The old bot chuckled them, out loud, simply because it made him laugh at least a little in spite of himself, to see other bots doing so. The old bot chuckled them, out loud, simply because it made him laugh at least a little in spite of himself, to see other bots doing so. And slowly his thoughts turned back to Firestorm. He chuckled again, amused at her still near-youngling 'what ifs' and ideas. And he smiled then, marvelling at just how wonderful it felt to him to see a near-youngling get a chance to dream and to wonder at all.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, turning around again, distractedly, to look back at Knockout, and remembering that his teammate, stilling sitting close to the wall beside the sliding door, on his cart, had come in for a reason. "What were you trying to ask me for?"

"An extra battery pack," Knockout explained, chuckling a little, most likely at the old bot's distractedness. "For a portable energon pressure meter. I wondered if you might happen to have one I can borrow for the machine on the youngling ward."

"I'll look through the storage rooms when I get a chance later," Ratchet promised. "I'll have a student run one over to you on your ward."

"Thank you."

"Never a problem of course," the old medic paused then again, and slowly he smiled just a little. "So... I heard from Arcee today, you may or may not have made it down your entire apartment hallway walking with your frame last night."

"I did indeed," Knockout answered. And his face-plate turned up a little in a pleased smile then, before he sighed, adding, "I can't wait until one day I'd strong enough and fast enough to walk a little outside, or even here at work."

"Try it sometime," Ratchet said, seriously. "Of course at work would be the best place to start as opposed to outdoors. But give it a try. It's a bit of a job of course to bring your own walking frame with you to work, so grab a spare from storage instead and use it a bit if you want it."

"If I know the younglings that come through the youngling ward, they would either cheer on my efforts or laugh at me for trying it..." Knockout mused out loud, his voice a mix of amusement and worry."

Ratchet was about to reply, to offer something that might have been encouragement to his damaged fellow medic, but he was interpreter before he could speak when Bumblebee stepped into the office, after he'd knocked once, politely, at the door. He held a data pad in his hand, and held it out to the old bot, with a serious look.

"I finished reading this today," he said. And the relief in the young student's voice was unmistakable. Ratchet just shook his head again, this time at his student.

"I recall asking you to finish that reading, the day before yesterday," he said, far less disappointed with him then he pretended to be for a second.

"I know," 'Bee replied. And clearly he was buying the disappointed act just fine, because his tone was flustered, growing obviously anxious. "I... I did the very best I possibly could. I ready ever moment I possibly had to devote to doing so. But with newborn twins now on top of my first born to care for while I'm doing it..." the young student chuckled then, a too nervous chuckle, as he sighed a little. "Today I read through a whole chapter on bot processor configurations, while I rocked Sparkplug with one arm, because she cried every time I tried to put her down in her basket. She fell into recharge, which is good because it meant some real study time. But then Hubcap woke up. Then Hotwire knocked over a full container full of energon all over the holovid player, which of course then shorted out, and I found the mess he'd made of the living room with every toy he owns scattered over the floor. Sparkplug woke up again... both twins were screaming... Hotwire was pouting..." he dropped hard into the chair in front of the desk then, an almost comical look of near defeat on his face-plate. "I... think at some point right around then, I remembered I had a bondmate on her way home anytime, and who might just hit the ceiling when she walked inside."

Ratchet's serious expression, broke then entirely, probably because Knockout, still sitting in his place across the small office, had promptly burst out laughing loudly. And the old medic just shook his head a little, chuckling, admitting, at least to himself, that the while situation certainly was amusing. But 'Bee was so far from even the slightest bit amused by then. And instead, he just looked down at his knees, with a look of a young bot that feared his own failings.

"Bad days happen, when it comes to younglings," Knockout said, oddly wisely given how hard he was still laughing. "We do the best we can, but parenting is difficult... and messy!"

"Says you," 'Bee answered, turning then to look in his direction. Despite his friend's all too casual laughter over it all, he still looked far too disappointed with himself. "You've been close to creator of the year since Cybershock was born!"

Knockout stopped laughing then in a single second. And instead he just looked in 'Bee's direction, serious now. Though he did still smile just a little, his look thoughtful.

"I only have one youngling," he said simply. "I can hardly imagine I'd do so well with three! Besides, I couldn't always care much for mine without a great amount of help." He looked suddenly almost sad then, and shook his head a little, as he added quietly, "it seemed to always look so perfect from an outside perspective I suppose. But there are times I still wonder now how Cybershock could possibly love me half as much as she does, given just how little I could do for her for at least her first full year..."

"We may live for so many centuries, but these days of tiny younglings, are still so very fleeting," Ratchet said. He looked intently at each of his teammates – both of them creators now, where he had never had that that chance in life himself – with a strange mix of pride and regret. And he knew that both of them would surely understand his musing first hand for themselves by then. "They grow up so fast, and one day you'll wonder where those tiny crying bots went."

"I know," 'Bee mused right back, shaking his head just a little, sure enough sounding like he understood so clearly. And he smiled slightly. "Hotwire's first big frame upgrade is tomorrow."

"I'll take good care of him," Ratchet answered, promising sincerely with a another tiny hint of a smile at the younger bot. "How does he feel about the whole matter? Or have you decided not to tell him much until morning?"

"I explained upgrades awhile ago already actually, because he started asking questions then, not long after Cybershock received hers." 'Bee laughed again, though a new kind of slightly growing nervousness showed in his voice by then. "She is after all his little best friend. He can't wait to catch up to her again..." He paused a second, thinking. "I suppose that only makes it easier. At least he's excited enough about it all to willingly accept it."

"That does usually make it so much better for those littlest of patients," Ratchet replied, understanding. And he was about to say more when a loud and urgent knocking at the door of the office, made him stop at once. And instead, he along with both of teammates, turned around to look toward the door.

It slid open then for somebot who had not even bothered to wait for him to invite them inside. And to his surprise and dismay, Firestorm walked quickly back into the small office. Her steps though still just the slightest bit unsteady were purposeful. And her face-plate bore a look of serious determination.

"Ratchet," she said firmly. And her hands came to rest quickly on the edge of his desk, in a gesture so clearly meant to indicate that that was not easily going anywhere until she'd said what she'd come back to say. "I'm not just some 'poor little damaged youngling' that came far enough for the world to be proud of me. Yes, I'm just another simple shop bot. I spend my days bagging assorted energon sweets with a smile on my face-plate, because I do like to do it. But I can do more. One day, before you know it, I'll be gone from that shop to run a business of my own. My application is in already for store space! You were so proud of me just for finally running. And yeah, that is pretty big. But you weren't there a century ago, to see me relearn to read code, and pour energon, and run the shower... all while I rebooted back then at least fifteen times in a day. I spent as much time falling hard to the floor, denting my frame, sometimes braking my own wrist and elbow joints, as I did on my own feet. But I did it, because I knew I could. Even when a shipload of bots said it might have been better if I'd just off lined, because I would never do it, I did it anyway." The mini-bot paused then, for just a second, and finally took a quick intake, her optics dimming in though and quickly brightening again, before she continued on speaking, while still staring the old bot in the optics. "I may be small. I may be damaged. I may be young and new to this planet that should have been my home in the first place. But I know who I am. I know what I can do, and If I don't know I deserve as much chance as anybot to find out. Please don't tell me I'll never be a flyer, because I'm on the small side. Don't think of implying it's all because I was damaged, or just because I'm simply... me. Because to me it still just sounds more like doubt then true impossibility."

The little white and yellow bot fell silent then, abruptly. And she turned around to look at the other two bots now inside the office, who had not been there when she was in there not long before. She looked from one of them to the other and back again, with a slight nervous chuckle, before her face-plate turned serious again and she let out a slight, proud little huff under her intakes.

"'Bee. Knockout." She mumbled, perfectly pleasantly, nodding once, politely at each in turn. "I'm sorry to have interrupted your conversation. Have a lovely day."

She turned then, back the the still wide open door, walked quickly toward it, and right on out of the office without a look back.

"Whoa..." Bumblebee mumbled, wide optic'd and obviously shocked, as the door slid shut.

"What in the name of the Allspark was _that_ about?" Knockout questioned. And clearly as he no less baffled himself.

"I think I may just have underestimated her," Ratchet admitted slowly. And as he spoke he just sat behind his desk, shaking his head hard, before he looked from one of his teammates to the other and finally down at the metal finish of the desk he sat at. "I assumed she was just being silly... a youngling with some ridiculous idea, and little idea what it really means. Perhaps the kid really could learn to fly..."

* * *

It was late into the night. And Knockout sat alone in the living room of his family apartment, on the comfortable grey sofa against a side wall, idly reading from a data pad he held in his hands. Knockout was tired, but that night it seemed recharge was all but impossible. He flipped to the next page of the novel contained on the pad, read two lines, lost his place and shook his head, dismayed when he realized he wasn't sure what it was he'd actually read on the previous page in the first place.

"Daddy?" a small voice called, from across the living room. And Knockout looked up at once from his data pad, to find Cybershock peeking around past the end of the hallway, and clearly just as wide awake as he was.

"Hey, my girl," he called out quietly to her, extending his arms at once. "Come here."

"Are you okay, Cybershock?" he asked her a short moment later, once she'd crossed the living room in slow steps, and settled onto the sofa beside him.

"No," the youngling mumbled, shaking her head a little.

"More nightmares tonight?" Knockout questioned, patiently. And Cybershock just nodded her head silently, leaving her creator concerned.

It had been at least a few weeks since her encounter with Magatron out on the roadway. And although the little bot had insisted on recharging alone again after just a couple of nights tucked in between her creators in their recharge station, barely one single night had passed without her waking up from a nightmare or flashback thanks to the threat on her life. Before that had happened, the odd nightmare was certainly not unheard of, of course. But these were far worse than any typical youngling bad dreams.

"Wanna tell me about it?" Knockout asked. He pulled his child against his frame with both his arms around her. And he watched her as she shook her head just a little, but then nodded slightly just a second later.

"I dreamed I was off line this time," she said slowly, her voice quiet, shaky. She sat with her head against his armour, and her little body shook just a little as she remembered everything her mind had created in in the world of her dreams. "I was off line, but somehow I still knew things. And I saw everything. I watched you and Mama, but... I don't think you could see me. You both looked sad for a while, and you cried all the time... I guess it must have been years though because one day I guess you both just... forgot about me. One day I... I watched Mama pack up this place and you both just moved away across city. Bots would... bots would ask you all the time if you ever had a youngling, and you both just laughed, saying that was so silly..."

"Oh, my girl," Knockout said sadly. He held her just a little tighter against him, and when she looked up, teary optic'ed, at him, he went on speaking with firm determination. "Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again, because I forbid it! But if anything ever did, if that worse thing in the world ever happened and you just weren't with us anymore, your mama and I, we could never forget you."

"Never?" Cybershock asked, seeking assurance as her optics stared at his. Her tiny body pressed against his, tighter and she continued to shake slightly.

"Never," Knockout answered. He smiled a little, and lifted her gently into his lap. "Never ever! How could we ever forget about you?"

"Not even in four hundred years?" Cybershock asked.

"Nope."

"Not even in ten thousand?"

Never!" Knockout laughed then as he grabbed his youngling harder, shaking her playfully back and forth in his arms. And she giggled, grinning at him.

"Not even in ten billion, five million, four hundred forty-seven and a half years," Knockout proclaimed then, making the youngling giggle harder.

"Daddy...?"

"Yes, Cybershock?"

"Are you sure Megatron is gone and never coming back? Like, really really double sure?"

"I'm double, extra, triple sure, my girl," Knockout said smiling his assurance as he looked down at his youngling, who now shook again just a little in his arms.

She'd asked about him a few times that past month. Untrusting of reality, he supposed, because the endless nightmares at her young age confused her so badly. And every time she'd ask he would simply answer her calmly, explaining again that he really was gone forever, that she was safe and he would never come back. This time, before that present night, almost two weeks had passed she the last time she'd asked. And Knockout could only assume that was a good sign of progress.

"Sure times five hundred?" Cybershock asked, her slightly shaking all but stopped by then. She was in part, just being silly. That much was clear. But at the same time, she was seeking further assurance in her own youngling way too.

"Sure times five thousand," Knockout answered, doing her one better, and making her laugh all at once.

"Okay," Cybershock said, appearing to accept the assurance gratefully, as she settled easily in her creator's arms, with a smile on her face-plate.

"Daddy, how did you get out here?" she asked after another moment, spent looking around the living room with obviously growing confusion. "I don't see your machine."

"It's still plugged in down the hall," Knockout answered. He grinned then, taking a moment to let his words fully click in his youngling's mind. "I walked out here with the walking frame."

"All the way down the hall?" Cybershock grinned brightly and then still brighter, as her optics fell on the walking frame parked near by (and which by then Ratchet had painted red to match Knockout's paint, just like he'd once done for Firestorm, and her own pale yellow.) "And you didn't fall even once?"

"I did once,," Knockout admitted. But still he smiled anyway, and chuckled under his intakes "Almost twice in fact. Getting back up is still the hardest part, but I can do it by myself now."

He sat another moment, hugging his much loved child, watching as she smiled up at him in her obvious pride in him, and smiling right back at her.

"Can we go out to the patio?" Cybershock asked, after another long moment. And her request was huge and important, because she had not shown a single bit of interest at all in anything to do with outside and the sky above since her recent misfortune alone outside at night. Even the patio was too close to 'outdoors' for her comfort, and while she was happy as ever to go out there in daylight, she would avoid it to the point of near panic the very second the sun began to set.

And so, pleased with his youngling's increasing progress through the effects of her own emotional trauma, and just as certain that neither of them would get much recharge for a while yet in any case, Knockout nodded his head in willing agreement, and reached out to grab the handlebars of the walking frame he'd parked close to him just as soon as the youngling had slid happily off his lap.

"I can help you!" Cybershock said, offering before she was asked. And she held the front of the walking frame steady, her small hands reaching up to hold tightly to the bar, using her own weight to keep it in place, while he stood up.

Knockout did not entirely need any help. He'd done it on his own more than once by then of course. Still, the youngling loved to help him. She always had in any way she could. And her helping was not exactly doing any harm at all. So he smiled at her in thanks, and pulled himself with some effort to standing on his feet. Still not exactly used to walking much at all, far from good at it by any means, and well aware that he could easily fall with one wrong step, he made his way forward, across the living room.

His progress anywhere by walking was impossibly slow. And he tired so quickly from the effort of doing it. It felt like several minutes before he'd made it even ten steps. And when he had, he stopped to rest a moment, leaning forward with his weight resting on the frame, and still not halfway to the patio doors. But Cybershock had walked with him, at his own slow pace, her hands away from the walking frame now, just letting him push it so as not to cause a fall in just trying to help him. And when he stopped, she stopped too, standing beside him, and looking up at his optics with the biggest grin across her face-plate that he'd seen in the past month.

The youngling had watched his progress though rehab all of her short life. And still recently she'd seen him stand on his feet and finally take a step or two here and there. But she had never seen him really walk before. He may have been slow – he was still a long way from walking outside anywhere, or through the marketplace. But she didn't care, and he knew it. Just to see him cross their own living room was enough for her. And starting out again, kicking his left foot forward and letting the right follow, he smiled right back at her, letting himself feel truly proud of his effort just to keep going. His foot slipped then, and his knee came close to giving out beneath him. But he reached at once to lock the handbrake on the walking frame's handlebars and jam the wheels, so that he could use the thing instead to simply steady himself and hold himself up a moment.

Cybershock yanked open the patio doors happily just as soon as they finally reached it. And she smiled again, while she held the frame steady again while Knockout sat himself down on the padded bench across from the railing. With no hesitation at all, she clambered back onto his lap just as soon as he was sitting. And he hugged her, smiling again, while he looked up into the night sky for a moment.

"Can I ask you a question?" the youngling asked, suddenly sounding so uncertain, as she snuggled on his lap, just as she'd always done since she'd been much smaller.

"Well of course you can, my girl," Knockout assured her. And he watched as she starred up, clearly distracted, at the distant stars high above.

"What happened to you?" Cybershock asked slowly. And she stopped speaking for just a second, before she added quickly to clarify her question. "I know it was a random processor failure. But what does all that really mean for you? I know you were... well different, once. You could run, and drive and transform... Bumblebee says you were the fastest car on the track once!"

"Ha. Well I don't know about that, but," Knockout hesitated just second before he made a decision, something he'd put off before and certainly more than once. Slowly, carefully so as not to overbalance and fall of the bench, he reached over to the small storage trunk in which he and Arcee tended to toss random things left outside on their patio. He reached down to the bottom and pulled out a data pad of photo-files - one the youngling had asked him about before. And she clearly recognized it too, because her optics lit up at once.

"I promised I'd show you this one day," he said, powering it up as she shifted around a little settling comfortably again on his knees, her head resting on his chest panel, and ready to look at the pages.

Knockout scrolled through the pad a bit to find page one. And he held it up to show his youngling an image taken of him by somebot, perhaps two days after his first malfunction. He lay still on a medical recharge station there, optics half closed and unfocused, paint dull and fading, and his head tilted to the left at a strange disconcerting angle from his inability to even hold it straight. There were wires and cables everywhere, covering the recharge station and good part of his own body, and it was clear even in a photo-file, his state was far from promising.

He was a bit better in the next image. But still by no means good. He lay just as obviously just as immobile as before. But at least by then his optics were open, and looking at the photo now in hindsight, it looked like he was at least seeing and looking at something with some interest. And his paint colour was brighter.

He reached up slightly, in the next image, to 'high five' Bulkhead – who was almost out of the frame entirely, save for a green arm and part of his left side. The recharge station had been raised just slightly at its top end, so that Knockout could lay just slightly upright. And his right hand, the only one that worked at all then, had missed the big green bot's completely. But at least he was so clearly trying his best to do the simplest of motions then.

"Daddy..." Cybershock cried. And Knockout looked at her again, to see the coolant tears that had just began to form in her optics. "It was so... horrible at first."

"It was," Knockout admitted honestly. His memories of those easiest of days after his malfunction were still somewhat unclear. But he recalled it well enough to know it was well beyond bad. He hugged his youngling tighter as he scrolled slowly through the pad. "This sounds so terrible to me now, my girl. But right from the start I could talk pretty well. Certainly more than clearly enough to say anything I wanted, to 'use my words as your Mama might say now... though it certainly was work just to say five words at first. Still though, I remember too many times I would scream with frustration and anger instead of just talking. There were times I'd try just as hard as I could to knock the scanner out of Ratchet's hand, just so he'd give up on me, leave me alone and let me off line... others times I'd just cry for an hour without stopping because I was so terrified of exactly that fate."

"Musta been some really bad days..." Cybershock said. And just like so often seemed to be the case, she sounded so strangely mature and understanding for such a small child.

"They were some bad days," Knockout said calmly, holding his child tighter again, all without dropping the data pad of photo-files. "The worst of my life." He paused a second then, looking down at the youngling he held, snuggled happily on his lap. She was still so very young, barely beginning to learn to type and read simple code. And she still spilled her energon, and said silly things loudly at terrible times. But Cybershock was smart, and curious. And though he doubted she'd understand even half of what he said to her exactly, he decided to try explaining anyway, because she would at least try her best to get it.

"I was supposed to be off line then. There are really no two ways about that. Bots just don't survive processor damage like mine... and if they do, at least for a little while, there's nothing left of their consciousness to really tell the tale anyway. But... then there I was. Three days, five days... nine days later. Still somehow online. Conscious, self aware as as anyone, communicating... But what was that all supposed to mean? I was aware enough to assess my own condition. And my own medical understanding told me, that statistically, I should have been days days before already. Ratchet used to say too, he didn't know how and why I hadn't died... he was half clueless and flying, as they say, 'by the seat of his pants' every step of the way for months as too exactly what to do with me. Because I obviously had so many needs to be met, and there was no plan in place, ever, to meet such needs."

He paused then on the next photo. And in this one he was sitting up, or at least partly so, on the inclined recharge station, holding his balance only by leaning back and letting the recharge station hold him up like that. Arcee sat beside him in a chair, smiling with a portable computer in her hands, half resting it on the safety railing on his right side. And he worked the keyboard himself – or at least he tried to – with his one somewhat working hand. And he was smiling too.

"By then I think I'd decided I wanted to live," he said to his youngling. "And your Mama just never seemed to leave for long. We'd sit in the medbay watching dumb old Earth television shows and science documentaries. She reminded me I was still as smart as I always was, when I could clearly keep up just fine with anything I watched. I'd still start screaming in rage sometimes, because... well I'm not sure why exactly. It's all still so confusing. But she'd just glare at me with that look she gets when she means business. And she'd tap her fingers and stare me down, because I could communicate if I wanted to and we both knew it. "

In the next photo, he was on the floor of the training gym, clearly trying so hard to roll to his right, while Arcee kneeled close by, just inside the edge of the photo. Both of them had matching grins across their face-plates, despite him trying to hard just to roll sideways, and her trying so hard not to reach over and help him.

"Me and your Mama had become bondmates the night before that one was taken," Knockout explained. And for a second he just enjoyed the look of amazement on the youngling bot's blue face-plate. "Ratchet decided I still needed to go to rehab, and she agreed with him. Of course I'm thankful for it now. Ratchet took that picture..."

"You finally looked so happy then, Daddy," Cybershock said, smiling up at him. "Just like like you've always seemed to me."

And Knockout smiled back then, nodding. "You're right, my girl. I finally was then. And it's so strange to look back now, because you're right when you say it seems I always was. But it did take a while. It's a challenge my girl, to go from honestly feeling like there really is nothing left to hope for, to deciding you can make it work in your own way."

He watched for a second as his youngling just smiled brighter. And this time it was her that flipped the page, curious interest and exception on her face-plate, to see what was next.

In that that image Knockout was sitting on his mobility cart. But still it was newly constructed. Tightly fitted harness straps held him sitting up in it's seat, and even then it was clearly a task just to hold any balance at all, and he leaned his head to the right against the headrest just slightly, it order to stay steady. His right hand rested on the front tray. His left worked the control so awkwardly. And still an excited smile spread over his face-plate, as he chatted with teammates somewhere off camera. One more quick, excited flip to the next image, revealed one of himself, again with Acree close by. She sat facing him in a chair while he sat, again strapped tightly into his mobility cart. And she held his left arm up and away from his body. Clearly she was about to let it go so as to see how long he could hold it that way, even if then it was barely possible to do so at all. But he was just as clearly far more interested in pulling faces at her for fun, than in rehab exercises at that moment. And she herself was on the verge of cracking a smile because of it.

"Turn the page, Cybershock," Knockout said grinning, after his youngling had spent a good moment first smiling and finally giggling, at that ridiculous image of her creator so shamelessly goofing off.

He knew that data pad of photo files just well enough to know what was on the very next page, and he suspected she would smile at it. The youngling flipped the page quickly enough, with a touch of her finger, and sure enough she sat a second grinning.

"That's... me!" she cried, excitedly.

And she looked down for a long moment at a photo-file of herself at perhaps ten days old, laying propped against his then still hardly functioning left arm, with her optics wide open, a hint of her first tiny smile on her tiny blue face-plate, while he grinned down at her. On the next page, he held her again, this time struggling a little to balance, seated on the rec room floor with her in his arms, so clearly motivated by her content little smile to keep his balance instead of handing her off. In the next, Arcee stood behind him, as he sat on the cart, the youngling in his lap again, and himself reaching up as high as he could to hand her a toy, while she just smiled, strangely patient for a baby – understanding... letting him try.

"I'd made up my mind well before then, that my life might still have been worth living," Knockout said, still hugging his youngling, as his optics gestured toward the photo, open on the pad. "So many things made me decide that my life could be worth really living it. Your Mama was a very big part of that..." Knockout paused then, to tap his youngling gently on the front of her face-plate with a fingertip, making her laugh loudly as it had since she'd been tiny. And instantly he was grinning at her. "But, you my girl... you sealed the deal for me."

Cybershock moved then, wiggling about until she was laying, partly on her creator's lap, and with her two small legs stretched across the bench. And for a while she just stayed that way, looking up at the stays above them again, while a smile across her face-plate. The smile slowly faded though, giving way to a huge youngling yawn, followed a second after that by another one, as she kept on watching the sky. In another moment her optics were closed and the little bot was clearly close to recharge.

Knockout sat still, shaking his head because he had no idea what he should do. Had he been on his mobility cart, it would have been little trouble for him by that point, to simply roll with her still on his lap back into the apartment, since pulling open the patio door and closing it behind him again, was something he could do easily by then if he just parked sideways beside it to do so. But sitting on the bench, things were tricky because he could not use the walking frame to stand, while he held her in his arms. He wondered a second if he should just wake her back up, so that she could walk with him slowly back into the apartment, and decided quickly that was his only real option But a second later, she moved on her own, wiggling around again with her head still on his lap, before her optics half opened.

"Daddy," she said sleepily. "I... I think I ra-member the second time you nearly died..."

Knockout's spark dropped then in dismay and concern and growing dread. But slowly he let himself feel mostly just curious, because the youngling bot certainly didn't appear upset by anything she was trying to say.

"You do?" He asked her, with some hesitation. And she just nodded slightly, sitting up again on the bench in order to sit beside him, looking thoughtful.

"I... don't ra-member much. I guess 'cause I was still a baby then. But I ra-member you kept talking to me, but it was just... words. It didn't mean anything but I think I know it was supposed to. I wanted you to hug me. To smile. To... be okay again. Mama put me down beside you, and at first I just got scared because there were machines all over the place and that was just... scary! I didn't know what Mama wanted me to do, so I just layed down too, and held your hand 'cause I thought that would be okay." The little bot paused then, looking still more thoughtful than before, before she eventually spoke again, sleepy as every and stifling another little yawn. "I... I think that might be the first thing I can ra-member ever in my life."

* * *

Bulkhead walked quickly through the base. And he quickened his steps even more, as he turned down a corridor that he knew would lead him eventually, to the hospital wards well past the medbay. He started singing again, a very different song than he'd been caught singing the day before, but still heavy metal, and still one he enjoyed as much as the first.

After a short walk, he reached the closed double doors he'd been heading for. And for a second he just paused in the corridor, looking up, suddenly anxious, at the small cheerful and bright sign, painted in rainbow coding that spelled out 'youngling ward.' He stood a second, strangely nervous, in front of those doors, before he stepped closer, allowing them to side open for him. And with a quick intake, he walked onto the ward.

He'd never been in that part of the building before, or at least hadn't since it had become a part of the hospital. He'd simply never had any real reason to visit that ward at all. And easily imagining a dingy grey walled place filled with younglings that were sick and injured, surely in pain, afraid and crying, made him want to visit the place even less because he simply didn't like the thought of young bots suffering. But stepping into the ward, he saw at once that the place was not at all like he'd eared it would be. The first thing he saw was colour, and that surprised him. One long hallway led away from the doors, and that hallway was painted a bright yellow, and covered in coloured dots of varying colours. There were doors that led to rooms along both sides of that hallway, and the frames of each were painted brightly, and each one different. The formed a rainbow along the length of the corridor.

Bulk' had expected the place to be noisy, filled with crying and worse. But it wasn't, and in fact he was sure he heard the giggles of some tiny first frame somewhere close by. With another intake, he started down the hall, until he came to the open door of what was clearly a small playroom, with a large open window at the very back of it, and old simple toys (most obviously donated, and well worn but well loved,) scattered over the floor with the carelessness of any playful youngling bots. He suspected, quite logically he thought, that the tiny giggles might have come from somewhere in there. But he could see no youngling bot nearly that small inside, once he'd peeked carefully around the frame of the door, curious.

He did instead, find Turbocharge. The youngling, was unstrapped from his complex support frame now. And it was parked next to the padded chair he sat on in the corner with a data pad in his hands. The youngling was clearly busy, hard at work on something or other, typing code on an a keyboard interface. And whatever he was working on, it sure seemed important to him. But he looked up from the pad regardless. And obviously recognizing Bulkhead at once, he smiled brightly in his direction.

"You came to find Switchblade?" the youngling asked, his tone obviously one of a small bot determined to be helpful.

"Yeah," Bulkhead nodded slowly, gratefully, as he smiled a little at the damaged young bot. "I promised her I'd come back for her today, talk her outside for a while, finish a couple good war stories." He shrugged a second, and having made a quick decision he added cheerfully, "You could prob'by come too if you want."

Turbo though, just shook his head with a smile on his face-plate.

"Thanks, but not today," he said, surprisingly adult in his tone. And he looked back a second to the data pad he held. "I've got stuff to do, but I know Switch would sure love to go out a while. She doesn't get many visitors." The youngling showed a hint of a smile, and said "room eleven is her room. End of the hall. I'd show you myself, but it's just not that easy to move." He gestured with is optics toward his legs – which now hat he was out of that standing frame of his, and simply sitting on a chair, were clearly badly misshapen and must have been near useless to him. But he smiled again, a bright grin that showed completely how he still wanted only understanding instead of any sympathy at all. "You can't miss it though. It's the very last room."

"What are you workin' on?" Bulk' asked the youngling bot, mildly curious. This youngling, he knew certainly did get visitors, and quite a number of them too it seemed, from the size of his apparent family. Still he was alone at that moment, and Bulk' wondered then if he might just have been the slightest bit lonely, since he was pretty well stuck where he was until someone came to help him.

"School work," Turbo answered, with a hint of a shrug. He glanced back down at the pad in his hands. "Even when I'm in here... and I'm in here a lot... I've always stayed on track."

"You... seem to have things under control then," Bulkhead said, mildly embarrassed now when he realized that the little bot he'd worried might be lonely, more than likely wanted instead to be left alone a while to simply do his lessons because he liked to study. So he backed up slowly toward the door, still smiling. "I'll leave ya to it."

"See you around," answered Turbocharge, causally and smiling again.

Bulk' walked on down the hall. And he found room eleven, sure enough at the very end of the corridor, easily enough. And he paused a moment in the door, singing the very same metal song again quietly under his intakes a moment, before he raised his big hand to knock lightly on the mostly closed door.

"Come in here a moment," Ratchet called out quietly from somewhere inside the room. And it was only then that Bulk realized he was even in their at all. The big green bot steeped sideways a little, to let the door slide open for him. And as soon as it had, he stepped into the room.

The room was small and simple, with its bright white walls and a single window across from the door. But the yellow curtain over that window, and the bright and colourful cover on the recharge station tight against the wall below it, made the little room look like it was surely a suitable place for any youngling to be.

The little bot lay on the recharge station flat on her back with her optics wide with nervousness, and that made Bulkhead strangely uneasy the second he saw her. Ratchet stood close to her, working with a small collection of supplies he was quickly spreading out onto a portable work table. In the far corner of the table and still snapped closed, sat a far too familiar light blue medical kit that no bot ever liked to see come out. Bulk's spark dropped then, and surprisingly hard and fast, as he looked again at the frightened youngling, understanding her panic.

"Just lay still like that a second," Ratchet said to the youngling bot. And he smiled assurance, although she clearly look no more assured in the least. "Hold your arm out for me. I'm just going to take a tiny energon sample from you, then I promise I'll leave you alone for a while."

"C...Can't you w... wait until later?" the little green bot asked him. And her optics, if such a thing was possible, grew still wider.

"Not going to happen, little bot," Ratchet said firmly. But he did chuckle a bit as he did, because he'd clearly heard the very same thing from youngling bots before. Scrap, no doubt he'd heard it from a full grown Autobot a time or two.

"Why... why not?" The poor scared youngling bot questioned. And she began to wiggle and squirm, and quickly she was half way to sitting up, as soon as she'd seen the old medic open the med-kid.

"Because you'll be just as nervous later as you are now if we wait." Any hint of the old medic well known for impatience, and his refusal to put up with any form of nonsense from a patient, was gone entirely, as it seemed it was anytime he worked with a youngling. And instead he just chuckled again, still smiling assurance. "Besides you'd just be thinking about it all day, and that will only make matters worse still."

"What do you n... need my... my energon for?" The little bot asked. And the poor thing sounded so clearly more scared then ever. Her optics were staring now straight at the little blue medical kit, and she was sitting up straighter, with her frame growing tense.

"I need to check your nanite counts," the old medi-bot explained, still surprisingly patient, as he tapped her gently on her one good shoulder panel. "Gotta be sure your numbers are still on the rise, since you've done so good with replicating them so far." He smiled again at the uneasy youngling bot. "Lay back down please. It'll only take a minute."

"Noo... No... I don't want to! Please... can't we just wait a few more minutes?" the little bot mumbled immediately, and when her optics so obviously fell just a second on a long and thin, hollow needle, which she must have easily known would soon used to pull energon from one of her lines, she sat even stiffer instead of laying down.

Bulkhead wanted by then to hurry away. Despite caring for the younglings of a couple of his teammates a time or ten, in the past few years, he still felt like he knew less about them than perhaps a bot should have. And the whole situation, a youngling scared and clearly on the verge of crying, made him uneasy in his inexperience. But her optics locked suddenly on his then, and clearly she noticed for the first time that he was even in there at all. And she almost smiled for a second through her panic, a hint of her strange amount of joy at seeing him again, flashing across her wide open optics, before her expression gave way completely to growing fright again.

Bulk' still almost left the room in a hurry regardless, almost deciding he could easily talk to her a short time later, and she'd surely understand just fine why he'd run for it. But in one tiny backward step to the door, he met her optics again completely, and his spark simply would not let him leave. Instead, and quite strangely to him, he wondered just a second if perhaps he really could be of any real help.

"ya scared it's gonna hurt a bit?" he asked, stepping close to the recharge station after pausing for a second to consider. Quickly he reached out to gently hold her tiny hand in his.

"Scared it's gonna hurt a lot," the youngling answered. And clearly she trusted him enough to be honest, where he suspected, in his however limited knowledge of younglings, that she might be nearing an age already where some of them might just have lied about such things. She held herself sitting, And though the tension left her just the tiniest bit, her optics darted around her in fight, and she looked so far beyond miserable and helpless. Finally she groaned, pitifully, "I... don't wanna be poked with things anymore..."

"I'd imagine you don't," Bulkhead replied calmly. And looking the nervous youngling over once quickly, he understood for the first time, just how much she really would surely have been through just to survive an event as bad the one she'd managed to.

Part of her tiny frame had been blown apart. He'd known that already of course. And it was obvious in any case, in her close to missing arm still wrapped securely against her body. And she'd been near offline when she'd finally been placed into a CR chamber, in a desperate bid to save her life when her systems came dangerously close to full on shut down. That was well known to any of the Autobot team by now – and they certainly had all been impressed by her survival. But all of that meant terror and trauma too. It simply had to, because it would have taken less to leave bots much older and biggest than she was, uneasy around the medics afterwards too.

"Come here, little bot," Bulkhead said, his confidence growing quickly now. And without any warning at all – and despite an initial glare of dismay from Ratchet – he scooped the tiny thing up in his arms, careful of her one destroyed arm in its tight protective wrappings. Ignoring an annoyed, nearly baffled huff from the old medic, he quickly sat himself down in a bright coloured chair that sat close to the worktable and was just slightly small for his wide body, and held her tightly laying on his lap.

"You're okay," he said quietly and smiling just a little. "I got ya. I got ya."

"W... where is Knockout?" the little bot asked immediately. "He can almost do that without hurting me!"

"He's away from the hospital today," Ratchet answered. And he obviously saw sense in Bulkhead's actions now, because he flashed him a quick look of thanks, and took a step closer. "I like to think I'm just as good as he is at this. I taught him to do this with younglings so well once."

"I'm scared, I'm scared!" the youngling cried, suddenly frantic. And suddenly she was trembling from her unease. She opened her mouth again, clearly intending to say more. But her vocalizier glitched in her sheer panic, and instead of words, she only made a horrible buzzing whirring noise, before it half way caught up again, and she managed to stammer terribly, "d-d-d-d-don't."

"Okay... okay..." Bulkhead said, trying his best, and simply not giving himself the time it would take to doubt himself by then. He shifted the tiny bot a little on his lap, so that her head rested lightly against his shoulder panel. And for a second he was amazed at just how light she felt. He took her hand again, holding it tightly, turning it a little so her arm turned upwards. And he made sure to gently hold it still that way. "We're good. We got this, little bot."

There was a loud whimper from the youngling bot then. And a tiny pathetic little whine, as she began to fuss a little again, probably more out of anticipation than anything. But Bulkhead watched as Ratchet carefully, and quickly pushed the small needle into her tiny arm through a gap in the front of the elbow joint, and managed to pull it out again in only a couple of seconds, without the little bot even jolting from discomfort.

"See?" Bulk' said, with a chuckle then. "Not so bad, huh?"

He was met in under a second, by the startled and surprised optics of a tiny bot who had no idea at all that the thing she'd feared so badly was entirely finished with so easily. But when she did realize it, she grinned brightly, before staring for a second down toward the floor, her expression almost sheepish.

"Ha. I've got more stories to you," Bulk' said, grinning at the tiny bot, as he set down down squarely on her feet. And he led her easily from the room, leaving Ratchet to put away his equipment. "A few of 'em actually, from my old wrecker days."

The small youngling looked up at him a moment, grinning while she trotted along beside down the hall. But abruptly she slowed her steps again, and looked down, her optics nervous again.

"What the matter?" Bulkhead, joking at first. "I thought you loved stories! Even if I'm not the best bot at tellin' 'em..."

"Ratchet said today, him and Knockout are going to redo these wrappings tomorrow..." the youngling said, looking at the floor. And she gestured with her remaining hand roughly toward her destroyed arm, to indicate exactly what it was she meant.

"Not a good thing then, I take it," Bulk' said, questioning her calmly while the two walked on again down the hallway of the ward. "At least not as you see it?"

"It is..." the youngling bot answered slowly. And she stopped walking again, in order to stand in one place and consider carefully. "I know it is... But I still don't like it. Ratchet said it might not hurt nearly as much this time, because I'm so much better now than I was last week. I guess I wanna believe him, 'cause I don't think he'd lie on purpose." She paused again, looking down at the floor, with a sudden strange look of shame on her face-plate. "I cried way to much the last time, and I know it. If Scrapheap had caught me, he'd have surely decked me good across the side of the head for that..."

"Well, he's not here," Bulk' replied seriously. He almost told her out loud as well that if that clearly no good creator of hers was anywhere near them, he'd more than likely shoot him for treating his youngling like he did. But he thought better of it, and instead he just smiled at her in understanding.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Notes/ I was asked if I would have an update ready and posted in time for Christmas. And really I tried to. Unfortunately with it being the holiday season and work at it's busiest for the year because of it, I just couldn't quite make it happen. I hope though that everyone had a wonderful holiday.**_

"So then happened?" Switchblade asked, excited. She bounced a little on the fronts of her feet as younglings seemed to do, paused in her steps, and looked up, waiting to hear the answer.

"What do ya think happened?" Bulkhead said back, laughing. "We kicked all twenty-seven of their..." he paused then, dangerously close to having dropped some language probably far from suitable for a youngling. So instead he just chuckled a little, shook his head once, and mumbled, grinning, "I kicked their... err... rear ends."

"That'd teach those troopers not to mess with you again!" Switchblade exclaimed. She walked on again, running a slight ways ahead of him. And turning to walk backwards for a second, she swung her one remaining arm around in front of her and to one side excitedly. "They got wrecked, Bulk'!"

"That they sure did," Bulkhead answered, nodding just a little. "Might not have been so lucky though if Miko had never shown up to help..."

"Thanks for takin' me back off the ward again," Switchblade said. She looked up, grinning and obviously just as grateful as ever to be away from there a while.

"No problem," Bulkhead answered, grinning right back.

He'd been to the youngling ward almost every day over the past few weeks to see the little youngling bot. Mostly he'd sit with her a while just chatting in the playroom. And sometimes Turbo would join them a while, happy as any youngling to hear good (if not sometimes exaggerated) Autobot war stories. Sometimes though he would take her off the ward with him, with full permission from Knockout of course. And they'd walk through the base, or a short ways outside for a while. Those short off-ward trips had grown increasingly common, as her condition improved with each day that passed. And the little bot was always just as happy as she'd been the last time, just to go anywhere at all.

"Where we going?" Switchblade questioned, her tone curious and a smile on her face-plate, as the passed by Ratchet's workshop, and the open doors of a few new empty living spaces. And bulkhead just shook his head a second, before he gave a little shrug.

"I dunno yet," he answered honestly, because indeed he really have no plan in mind. "We're just kinda walkin.'"

"You do that a lot? Just kinda walk to nowhere?"

"Hmm... sometimes, I guess. You good to keep walking?"

"I'm good, Bulk."

"Not getting tired out?"

"Nope."

"High five, kid," Bulkhead said, suddenly. He held up a hand, and leaned forward a fair bit so that the small youngling could reach it that way.

Grinning, the little reached up just as high as she possibly could with her remaining arm. And jumping just a little into the air, she managed to smack the front of his big hand with the front of her much smaller one. She giggled a little at the metallic tinging noise that made.

"Low five," Bulk said, just a second later. He held the same one of his hands lower then, well without her easy reach. But he chuckled and then laughed loudly, pulling his hand away quickly before she could hit it.

"Too slow!" he joked, earning a laughing mock-pout from the youngling, who tried again and this time succeeded.

"Gimme... ten," Bulkhead said then, thinking quickly, and just having fun. He held both of his hands out at one, in front of him, palms up. And he grinned.

"Completely not fair, Bulk'" Switchblade said at once. She was not upset, but she did appear to think a moment. "I've one got one..."

Finally she smacked one of his hands lightly, before she immediately did the same to the other, using her one hand for both.

"Five and five is ten!" she declared, smartly. And a grin spread across her face-plate, as she started to walk again.

"Any word yet on the progress of that arm that's being made for you?" Bulkhead questioned, curious then as she walked on right beside her again. He knew well that the little bot was well involved in her own medical progress, because Knockout fully believed his young patients had every right to understand things that concerned them directly far more than anyone.

"It's built," the youngling bot said at once. And she grinned again, obviously excited by the news she shared. "It's pretty neat too... almost exactly like my old unsavable one. Knockout showed it to me yesterday because I asked if I could see. I guess I go for repair work soon... Just as soon as my nanite counts go just a little higher."

"Did I ever tell much you about my human friend Miko?" Bulkhead asked, changing the subject so drastically because, even though he had asked in the first place, he found himself suddenly uneasy with conversing about medical procedures. And he found himself strangely chuckling at his own question.

"Knockout talks about that same human sometimes," the little bot said. "Your human partner, from so many of the stories you like tellin',"

"Makes sense," Bulk' said with a shrug of his own and a slight smile on his face-plate. He turned to the right when the corridor intersected with another up in front of him. "She was 'his human' too eventually, almost as much as she was mine. She's back in America now... that's across the planet from her home. She's playin' her music to any agent that will listen for a minute, got a day job fixin' up old electronics. You remind me of her ya know?"

"That's crazy Bulk'!" Switchblade exclaimed, laughing hard as she trotted behind him. She caught up quickly, her short little youngling legs running to do so. And when she did, she stopped again in front of him, pausing to look up, her expression baffled. "How can I remind you of some... human? I'm a bot, you know!"

"The humans aren't so different from us, little bot," Bulkhead said shrugging again. And he laughed a little at that, remembering that he had once been shocked to discover that fact from himself. "She's older than you are of course, at least in human terms. But if she'd been Cybertronian, I'm pretty sure she'd be a lot like you."

"Bulkhead?"

"Yes?"

"I think you must have been exaggerating just little... there's nooo way it was twenty-seven troopers!"

"You got me, kid," Bulkhead said, laughing a little. He lowered his head and made a slight show of pretending to appear mildly ashamed of himself. "It was more like six. But they were all very fast moving hard hitters."

"Bulkhead?"

"Yes?"

"You look... different!"

"Different?" Bulkhead just shrugged at the youngling, who trotted on along beside him.

"Yeah..." Switchblade studied him a moment, looking him up and down, clearly determined to place exactly what it was that she thought looked so different in the first place. Finally she paused in both her gazing and her steps, and raised her one hand, excited to have clearly' worked it out. "Bulk! You've buffed your finish I think. Plus a new coat of wax!"

"Ha. Yeah I s'pose I did." Bulkhead simply shrugged again. "I've got a party to go to tonight. Figured maybe I oughta look decent."

"A party?" The little bot's optics lit up with clear curiosity then.

"A little get together here on base. For a... well sort of a friend of mine now I guess. He's going to join the Autobots soon. The day after tomorrow I think. Arcee wants a gathering and it's a good excuse to have one I s'pose..."

"An Autobot gathering..." The youngling's tone was one of wonder and amazement now as she took a step and kept on walking again, Bulkhead right behind her. "That must be so much fun... Earth music. New bots to meet..."

"You can come if you want to," Bulkhead answered. Because he was sure Knockout wouldn't mind, as long as it was run by him first in order to okay it.

"Really?" The little bot stopped walking again, and just stared up at him with a look somewhere between a grin and the expression of a youngling afraid to believe she'd gotten what she really wanted.

"Sure," Bulk' told him, smiling right back, while he walked on again and waited for her to, sure enough, follow him immediately. "There will be other youngling bots there too. Parties are not for grown bots after all. Arcee and Knockout's little bot will be there. And you remember the med student, Bumblebee? He's got a bondmate of his own... and they have kids too."

Their aimless walking too them to the lift, leading to the basement level of the old base. And they got on at once, riding down because it seemed to both, just as good a place to wander next as any.

"I've decided I don't wanna be 'Switchblade' anymore," the youngling mused out loud, a moment after the two bots had left the lift and walked on again. The common was a strange one, and quite out of nowhere at all. And it made Bulkhead pause a second in mid-step so that he could look down at the tiny youngling, baffled.

"You... need to have a name," he said, perhaps quite ridiculously stating the obvious. "What would you be called then if you weren't Switchblade?"

"Switchgear!" the youngling declared at once. And it was obviously in that, that despite the seemingly sudden randomness of her comment, she really had been thinking it over for a while already.

"It's still close enough to the name I have now... the one Scrapheap picked for me," she quickly explained. "But it's different too! More about speed and horse power, and less... weaponish. And Cybertronians charge their names all the time. It's not like I'd be very first to want to..."

"Switchgear is a pretty decent name," Bulkhead said, smiling. "And you're certain right about not being the first to pick a new one..."

They walked on in silence for a while again, each just thinking their own thoughts. And their walking had led them finally to the doors of the training gym. Bulkhead stood still, letting them slide open, before he wandered idly inside. And just as idly, he gave a few good hard hits to his favoured heavy punching bag, mounted firmly to the ceiling. He chuckled a little, as one hard blow made it swing wide, away from him. And when it returned, he hit it again just as hard with the other fist.

"That's pretty good," Switchblade said, her tone impressed.

She stood back a safe distance just watching a moment while Bulkhead hit the bag. But suddenly she began to move fast, running toward the other, slightly lower and lighter one a short ways away. Her feet left the floor quickly, in a good jumping kick, and her right foot impacted firmly with the bag, before her one had followed quickly. She'd landed perfectly back on both feet, and quickly jumped to kick the bag again, before she spun around slightly and paused with her destroyed right arm facing toward it. Not a second later though she turned a little back the other way, hit it three times fast with her left, jumped up to kick at again and faced right before she turned again, her processor so clearly struggling just a little to compensate instinctively for the damage to her body.

"That's... impressive..." Bulkhead said, in baffled reaction.

He knew that younglings could certainly punch and kick. Of course they could. He'd certainly witnessed 'play fights' between pairs and groups of them more than once in his life. He was sure as anything in fact, he must have played the same same way when he was one himself. But Switchblade was not just a youngling simply messing around. This tiny youngling bot could surely do a bit of real damage to someone, even with only one arm. And she could do so, because someone had taught her how to do exactly that.

"You be... careful," Bulkhead warned cautiously, never forgetting she still had recovering to do to.

"Where'd you learn to kick and punch like that anyway?" he asked a moment later, having watched her hit the bag a few times and kick it once more with slightly more caution to her movements.

"Scrapheap used to pick on me all the time when he was mad... and he was almost always mad about something..." Switchblade said. She may have been impressive in her moves, for a youngling so small. But still she was small. And she never had made the bag swing all that much by simply hitting and kicking it even as hard as she could. She backed up from it then, and it was only a second before the very slight swing she'd managed to cause it, stopped on it's own. "He'd spill his drink while I was playing, and he'd stomp hard across the room to kick me to the floor because he said I must have bumped the table. Stuff like that. But he was a pit fighter once, ra-memeber. And he'd still train all the time, downstairs in the basement. I used to sit on the stairs and watch because at first I just thought it was pretty neat. One day, he smacked me in the head, so I hit him back, just like I'd watched him hit his punching bag." The youngling shrugged again, her expression almost a little too proud, to hide just as obviously sadness. "He started teaching me after that. Said maybe I'd be good at something after all..."

"Do you like doin' such training?" Bulk' asked, his voice a mix of curiosity and concern. And he watched the little bot appear to think hard a moment.

"It's kinda fun sometimes," she answered slowly. Her tone unsure and completely noncommittal. "Sometimes I think I just liked it so much because I liked being good at something. Besides, my creator was nicer to me while we trained together and he taught me new moves. He told me 'nice job' once in a while... instead of just callin' me stupid... I'm off balance a bit now though, prob'ly because of..." She looked a second at whatever was left of her destroyed arm, wrapped up in it''s bindings against her frame

"I don't think I like your creator very much," Bulkhead mumbled, meaning it entirely. But he looked down a second later at the youngling now standing at his side again, and shook his head a little. "I hope it doesn't bother you that I don't..."

"Most bot don't like my creator much really," the little bot replied, her tone strangely understanding for a bot that young. "Of course they don't. He's loud. He's usually mean. Ratchet says he's nothing but a first rate bully. And I guess his friends would be then too. Those bots are just a bunch of... meanies!"

Bulkhead nodded slowly, in understanding and agreement. Because a decent amount of the recent chaos in the city had been traced back to Scrapheap and his small group of needlessly far too violent 'friends.' Two of those bots sat in cells already for their part in the downtown explosion in which Firestorm had been injured. Another three had been questioned for repeat bar fights that spilled out into the street. And still one more was jailed for breaking into somebot's apartment, attacking the bot just minding his own business inside, and sending him to the hospital injured.

"Bulkhead..." Switchblade said, pulling the big bot from his reflecting at once. Her small hand tugged at his urgently, and her pair of bright blue optics looked at at his. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Sure I can," Bulk' chuckled right back. He knew he certainly could. He'd kept plenty for Miko.

"Can I tell you one then?" the little bot asked. And she tugged again on his hand, harder now, until he took a hint and kneeled down to be at her own level.

"Uhh... okay," Bulk' said, chuckling a little more.

"I wish you were my creator," Switchblade told him. And her voice was serious, as she looked at him, sadly and smiling.

"M...me?"

"Yep," the youngling said. Her tone was strangely finally in that simple answer. But she slowly spoke again, explaining. "You would have been good at it, Bulk'. You tell me stories, and make me laugh. And you care about me too. You always come to visit me... you always make time to, even though I know you're busy building housing. You never make fun of me, or yell at me just for crying. I bet I could call you anytime when I'm supposed to be recharging, if I got scared or I needed help, or I was lonely. You once called me a decent kid and..."

"Well sure you can call me, little bot," Bulkhead said, smiling at her just a little. "You have my comm-code I think..." He was about to say a little more, to repeat the code to her in case she had forgotten it. But he saw the small tears then, forming at the sides of both of her optics. And slowly a couple of them escaped down her green face-plate, as she climbed onto his knees.

"You'll find a family, little bot," Bulkhead said, because he had no idea at all what else he could say. "Any day now the applications will be coming in from bots ready to fight over you, because any of them would be lucky to have you in their lives."

"I sure hope you're right about that, Bulk'," the youngling answered. And she smiled then just a little, a tiny hint of a hopeful smile.

"Come on, Switch," Bulkhead answered, changing the subject quickly with a laugh, and grin on his face-plate. "We've got a party to get you all buffed and shiny for."

* * *

"We should get going back inside," Firestorm said, with a smile on her face-plate. She looked up from her place on the ground, at the edge of the courtyard outside the base – which she was happily sitting on completely by choice, despite the fact that a perfectly comfortable bench sat not a metre away from her.

Sitting in front of her, on that bench, Soundwave lowed his head a little, sure it did little at all to hide his anxiety, at least from her.

"I am still... uncertain I should go..."

"It's a party for you!" Firestorm exclaimed. She got to her feet in a few just slightly awkward and struggling motions, before walking as fast as she could around to the back of the bench. And playfully, she shoved him once lightly from behind."Of course you should go. You need to go!"

"It's not a huge gathering or anything," she reminded him, in the very next second. "Just the team we all both know, a few more Autobots and any friends they wanted to invite... I can't see it being more than twenty bots there."

"Gathering – unnecessary," Soundwave muttered. But he got to his feet slowly, after she'd moved to shove him again, just as lightly as before

"The Autobots, it seems do love a good get-together and any good excuse to have one," Firestorm answered grinning. And she quickly grabbed his hand and pulled him froward a couple of steps. "You should know well how it all works. You're going to be one of them soon."

Himself - an Autobot. To Soundwave the idea sounded so strange, even silently inside his own processor. It went against anything and everything he'd believed in and ever thought he'd wanted, until still recently. But now, it was a thing he wanted more than anything, and that idea unnerved him just a little. Still, he wanted what he wanted, and he would not give up on himself and his true ambition. Not now... not ever again.

"I've been thinking a bit lately about my brother," Firestorm said suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. "What he might have thought of... well of everything really. Just how far the city has come. Of you. Of.. us..."

"I have doubts Windstorm would have liked very much about the idea of us," Soundwave mused, considering and suddenly at least slightly saddened. But Firestorm just smiled in response.

"I don't know about that," she said. "He was way too protective of me most of the time. Stopped me from trying. Stopped me from really... living... just so I would never be hurt, or fail, or be sad, or even laughed at. But he loved me so much. He gave up so much just to care for me himself when clearly no one else would. And he did it all without any help from anyone..." She swung her hand back and forth a little as she walked, taking Soundwave's with it. And she smiled a wistful little smile as she went right on musing out loud. "His biggest fear for me though seemed to be that I'd never find love of my own. I overheard him talking more than once with good friends of his about that very thing. Windstorm would have been shocked by you at first. I don't doubt that for a second. I doubt very much he would have understood, why you of any bot. But I think he'd be okay... He believed in second chances. And for him to have known you're going to be an Autobot..."

The reached the side doors of the base quickly. And Firestorm pulled Soundwave inside, laughing, just as soon as they had slid open, to let them enter. She pulled him forward after her while she began walking faster. She still stumbled a little, and her steps were slightly unlike those of other bots, and walking faster only made both of those things slightly more obvious. But she was walking well, and Soundwave knew she could have run is she'd wanted to. He smiled a little behind his face-shield at just seeing her so steady when once it had seemed impossible. And he would have smiled longer but the damage to his face-plate made it too hard for him to hold a smile for long at once.

The common room, far less used by now, was fully in use that evening. It was filled with bots when the pair arrived. Conversation filled the room, music played somewhere in the background, and containers filled with various colours of flavoured energon clinked lightly on tables, as bots drank happily while they interacted. Soundwave stood stiffly in the doorway, just watching as bots, many of them his soon to be faction-mates, all chatted easily with one another with their backs turned, and not appearing to notice him.

"Daddy," cried Arcee and Knockout's youngling, Cybershock somewhere clear across the room. And she grabbed both of Knockout's hands as the music track changed to one much faster than then one before it. "Dance with me, dance with me!"

Soundwave heard himself laugh a little, as he watched Knockout - sitting on his mobility cart with his seat belt over his lap – hold the little bot's hands, pulling her arms one way then the other in time to the beat, while she did her best at some clearly out of time 'dance moves' with her feet on the floor. Firestorm laughed too, and looking over, Soundwave saw her smile, just watching the silly youngling having fun with her creator.

"Soundwave! Firestorm!" Arcee said, appearing close to the doorway, gesturing with a waving hand and smiling. "Come in here, will you."

Firestorm was walking forward at once. And Arcee pulled her excitedly into the common room by the hand. But Soundwave found himself lagging behind a ways, on edge and looking around the place, glad for the covering that hid his nervous face-plate. He had been inside the common room many times of course. But now it was crowded with bots in their various conversations. And unconsciously he pulled his arms in closer against his body, determined to avoid bumping against anyone in a room just a bit small for such a party.

Arcee offered him a container of coloured, and obviously well flavoured energon at once. And despite smelling a hint of cobalt and copper, and remembering that he enjoyed both of those flavors, he shook his head a little, waving her and the offer off with a gesture of his hand. And he hoped only a second later when it occurred to him to think of it, that his behaviour had not been taken as rude.

Soundwave turned slightly and nearly bumped into a small framed silver and orange femme he knew was Bumblebee's bondmate, and a close friend of Firestorm. Speedbreaker. He found the name finally in his processor, recalling that he'd heard it at least a few times since defecting. He had scared her nearly half way to off-lining once when they had first encountered each other. But she was long over it by now. And she nodded politely to him in greeting, a newborn in each of her arms, while her first youngling, Hotwire, peeked out from his place hidden behind her legs, with shy uncertainty clear on his small silver face-plate

"Hotwire, say hello to Soundwave," Speedbreaker urged the small bot, chuckling in her encouragement to the youngling to be friendly and polite.

"It isn't you," Speedbreaker said, her tone apologetic where she would once have been nothing but nervous herself. "He's like this with anyone until he really gets to know them."

"Bumblebee and Ratchet both send their greetings," she continued on, shifting one wide awake and lightly fussing youngling held by her left arm without waking up the recharging twin in her right. They had an emergency tonight but both say they might make it late."

"Soundwave!" a bot exclaimed, somewhere close behind him. And Smokescreen, the bot who it was obvious in just a second, had spoken, smacked him hard against the back of the shoulder panel without any warning at all. "Welcome to the Autobots!"

"Thank... you..." Soundwave mumbled, forcing himself to sound both calm and polite, despite the physical jostling from a bot who should have known well not to touch his body armour.

"Soundwave, do you recall my small human friend called Miko?" Knockout's voice asked from the other direction. And Soundwave nodded absently in response to the out of place and random seeming question, before he turned around to see his teammate now parked close to him on the cart, his youngling now sitting happily on his knees.

"She called it first you know?" Knockout explained, smiling a smiling that still seemed somehow strange on his face-plate in place of his old well known arrogant smirk of times now gone by. He reached out with one hand extended, but at least he was more than good enough not to let his hand touch Soundwave's frame at all. "She told me you'd be an Autobot one day."

"Are you going to wear a faction Symbol?" Cybershock asked, still perched grinning on her creator's lap, balanced somewhat precariously on his bent knees while her hands waved about in her excited chattering. "Do you know where you want to have it put yet? Have you decided? You'll be a great Autobot, even if there isn't a war to fight anymore. Mama says it's just symbolic now. But I think that makes it even cooler to wanna be one!"

"Cybershock, please let him answer one question at a time," Arcee told the youngling, laughing a little close by. She snatched up the wide awake newborn from Speedbreaker's arms then, with a grin on her face-plate. "You aren't giving him even a second to think!"

"She is... just... excited..." Soundwave answered slowly, because he was pretty sure he understood the youngling bot's emotions.

"Hotwire!" the youngling called Cybershock called out then, speaking, it seemed, to the silver and yellow youngling still hiding somewhere behind Speedbreaker's knees nearby. She slid down easily from her creator's lap, and ran to stand beside him in under a second. "Come on. Let's go get energon jelly snacks! My Mama made them, and hers are always the bestest!"

"You'll always be among her greatest heroes now, you know," Arcee said, looking back in Soundwave's direction, while her hand gestured toward her now fast retreating youngling, running across the common room with her playmate.

"You, along with that predacon, saved her life," she explained, when Soundwave just looked at her, almost overwhelmed, though hidden optics. She took a small step closer to him. And for a second it seemed she might just take hold of his arm, in a gesture most bots would take as friendship. But she didn't and instead just stood, pausing with her hand extended a short ways from him, looking at him with serious optics. "It's just as hard for me now to wrap my head around as it was the night all that happened. But she really would not likely still be with us now, if you hadn't jumped in to help her without a thought for yourself." Arcee smiled then. "That was the night we all knew without any doubt at all, that former 'con you used to be was really dead and gone forever. It will always be my lifelong honour to stand in service to the Autobot faction, beside a bot that saved the spark of my own child."

"I am simply relieved to see that she is clearly alright," Soundwave answered. His emotionally overwhelmed state was worsening by the moment, and he wondered then how, if at all, he would soon successfully complete his Autobot commitment vows.

He was glad then to remember that Knockout, who had always felt his own commitment was never fully official enough because of unfortunate circumstance, would repeat his own soon after – thus taking some of the attention away from Soundwave, who panicked with the very thought of being too close to the centre of it.

"Both in body and in processor and spark," he added, slowly. And he smiled, behind his face-shield, toward youngling of current discussion, now busy across the room, along side her small friend, scanning a table filled with treats.

"She got over it all so quickly," Arcee said, smiling just a moment more, before she stood shaking her head slowly. "Far more so than me. She's not even having nightmares anymore. I haven't recharged straight through one whole night yet."

"It all just takes time, Arcee," Knockout told his mate. He smiled at her and she smiled right back. And the look of silent unspoken love and understanding pair quickly exchanged, reminded Soundwave at once of the way Firestorm so often seemed to look at him. He was, now that he thought about it, certain he more than likely looked right back at her in much the same way.

"'Bout high time the two of you finally got in here," Wheeljack declared, speaking obviously to both Soundwave and to Firestorm, and just as obviously doing so in a light-sparked and joking manner. He stood arm in arm with some unknown lightish blue painted mini-bot, who judging by the lack of any faction symbols on his simply body work, was clearly from among the refugees. And he looked at up at Soundwave, his optics focused quickly on his darkened face-shield, staring with the look of a bot who couldn't exactly help but do so. And Soundwave just looked down toward the floor, uneasy.

Wheeljack was the second bot at the party to smack Soundwave, however well meaning it may have been, across the shoulder panel like he did his other teammates all the time. And just as soon as he'd done so, he grabbed at the still staring refugee with his other arm, with a loud laugh. Both of them stumbled just a little then, making it more than clear by then, that both of them were at least slightly drunk. "Autobot means more than just a faction in war, my friend. It'll always mean something to us and society. Welcome aboard!"

"Thank you," Soundwave managed to reply, slightly more clearly than the last time he'd done so to Smokescreen. But he did make a point of backing up a good pace, out of range of the wrecker's reach, far from trusting he would not cheerfully smack him again.

Soundwave turned around partway, looking slowly around the room again, when the conversation had died out. And this time he caught sight of Bulkhead, who sat in a corner at the back of the room, on a bench that sat against the wall. And he talked intently with some other still unknown dull green youngling, who judging by the metallic wrappings that held an arm tight against the side of her frame, had obviously been damaged. Soundwave shuddered a second inwardly, just watching the youngling on the bench. Because she reminded him of the countless many injured, often horribly in countless war zones on Cybertron for centuries. He'd made such damage happen, and he'd done it once than once.

But this little bot was not a causality of war. He reminded himself of that in under a second, pushed away his threatening despair and watched her as she smiled, kicking her feet attached too legs to short for her to touch the floor, while Bulkhead pointed gestured around the room, obviously explaining to her who his friends were and how he knew who.

"That little one is Switchblade," Arcee said. She moved so that she stood beside Soundwave again. And with a causal wave of her hand, she motioned toward the youngling bot on the bench, while she chuckled a little. "She's one of Knockout's patients. And she and Bulk' seem to have formed quite the friendship. It's frankly quite fragging adorable."

"She is Scrapheap's youngling?" Soundwave questioned, seeking confirmation, because he reasoned he was right. "The one he dared to walk away from..."

His anger returned to him at once, just as strong as the night he'd confronted Scrapheap in the hallway. And he looked down at the floor, trying hard to force it away. Arcee was angry too. He saw it on her face-plate. And he saw her frame tense just a little, before he hid her own anger behind a fast intake and small smile.

"She is, yes," the Autobot answered slowly. And she smiled brighter then in the small youngling's direction clear across the room. Knockout joined her again, a small fuel container now in the hand he was not using to drive the mobility cart. And Arcee handed Speedbreaker's newborn off to him just as soon as he'd stopped rolling forward, settling the baby bot onto his lap with a grin on her face-plate.

Bulkhead had began to dance by then, in time to the music that was playing. Or at least he tried to – horribly – with the green youngling standing on his feet. The little bot tried so clearly hard, to hold her balance that way, with her one remaining tiny hand holding his big green lower arm. And Bulkhead held her up easily with one of his hands behind her. The youngling with grinning. Bulkhead was laughing. And even when he clearly missed a step, and then three more... and nearly knocked over a speaker stand by tripping over it, the laughter and the smiles never stopped.

"Just look at her now," Arcee continued on, laughing a little herself while she gestured toward the youngling bot. "Scrapheap rejected her because she's 'defective' now, at least in his optics. But she's so smart and charming.. and just plain wonderful. She's Knockout's princess of the youngling ward, and Bulkhead's very small new friend. Whoever takes her home one day soon, to raise her as their own... they owe Scrapheap some thanks in a way, because he gave them a wonderful gift he was never close to good enough to have in the first place..."

"Try some of this stuff," Smokescreen offered, appearing again from somewhere in the small crowd of bots, and interrupting, probably without realizing he'd done so. He held two containers of bright coloured energon, balanced awkwardly in his right hand, as well as one slightly less full one – presumably his own – in his left.

"Wheeljack's all too famous high grade home brew," he explained, laughing a little too much, offering out the small containers to Firestorm and Soundwave.

Firestorm slowly took her offered container, and took a slightly hesitant sip from it. And from the look of indecision that appeared on her face-plate, it was clear at once that she was unsure if she liked the stuff or not. Soundwave though just looked at the small container still held in his soon-to be faction-mate's outstretched hand. And finally, after a moment, he just shook his head in what he hoped would be understood as polite refusal. But the young Autobot just laughed, grinned, and shoved he container into his hand anyway, before he turned to walk away again back into the crowd.

"It isn't half bad," Firestorm said, taking another small sip, and pulling somewhat of a face over it. "Well... sort of... maybe..."

"On the subject of that lovely little bot," Arcee said, her one of simply musing out loud, as she looked across the room at the youngling in question, still dancing with Bulkhead while standing on his big green feet. "I think I'll go and chat with her a moment."

The Autobot walked away quickly then, smiling happily all the while. And when she was gone, Firestorm took Soundwave gently by the hand and led him toward a bench against the side wall of the common room.

"Let's hide out over here for a second," she said, dropping playfully onto the bench. And Soundwave, nodding gratefully, sat down beside her.

He dared to remove his face-shield then, considering for a moment, finally deciding to trust that most bots would not be offended. Others, he reasoned, letting himself laugh just a little, were quickly becoming too intoxicated to have much chance of noticing at all. He released Laserbeak as well, from her place still docked against his front panel, because he'd sensed not long before, that she was clearly awake, and curious to see for herself exactly where they were.

The bird flew straight to his shoulder panel at once. And Soundwave, patting her wings slowly in greeting, chanced a sip from his own container, that had been shoved into his hand. And strangely, he found himself laughing just a little more as he took another much smaller sip.

"No worse then the near toxic substance brewed by Decepticons in wartime," he said. "And certainly far more desirable than that made by combatants in the fighters' dormitories of pre-war Kaon..."

"Are you sure this stuff is safe?" Firestorm questioned. And it was clear in in the tone of her voice that her question was perhaps only half way meant with humour.

"Only in small enough..." Soundwave started to reply, uncertain if he wanted even one more sip from his container

But small feet, moving at close to a slow running pace, toward him across the floor, made him pause at once to look for their source.

"Are you okay?" Tiny Cybershock questioned. She stopped running and stayed standing a moment, looking up and Soundwave, while he sat up straight on the bench.

"Yes," Soundwave answered. He let himself smile just as much as he could. And he saw the little bot smile bright back.

"Just hiding from the crowd?" The youngling questioned. She reached up as high as she could, obviously trying her hardest to pet Laserbeak, who sat perched still far out of her reach. The bird, after some seconds hesitation, obliged her by hopping down to the back on the bench to finally be patted by the youngling, on the top of her head.

"Yes," Soundwave answered her, quietly.

"I hope I'm not being an... an annoyance then..."

"No."

"Try a jelly snack," Cybershock said, holding out two of the little treats, she'd carried over carefully with her left hand, pausing until Firestorm and Soundwave both took them from her. "My mama made 'em. She's so good at it. She always gets 'em so... wiggly!"

Soundwave stared a moment at the strange thing he held, still wrapped in plastic film, in his hand. A strange, light purplish energon sweet, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, speckled with yellow sulphur dust. And sure enough it wiggled and jiggled as he simply moved to unwrap it.

"Inform your carrier that it certainly is interesting," Soundwave said slowly, smiling again just a little, after he'd dared to put the strange snack onto his mouth.

"I really meant it you know..." Cybershock said, after only a second. And she grinned a huge grin. "You really will make a great Autobot."

"I am..." Soundwave answered, about to tell her he was grateful for her faith in him. But Cybershock, to his great shock and dismay, jumped up at once to climb right into his lap, before he could even react. And he was still shocked and speechless, moved and shaken, when she moved just as quickly to hug him – her little arms wrapped tight around his upper frame and her face-plate tight against the much bigger bot's shoulder panel.

"Cybershock... I..." Soundwave muttered, barely finding his voice through his dismay.

He tried hard to explain that her actions were foreign to him... strange and almost terrifying, though he understood she didn't mean it to be so. He tried just as hard, to tell her that few bots ever made physical contact with him at all... and simple shoulder smacks and handshakes made him nervous. But he couldn't explain that in words, because sensible language was quickly failing him again. And just a second later, he didn't want to explain it at all anyway. Instead he just hugged her right back, wrapping his arms as gently as he could around the youngling's tiny frame, sure it must have looked strange and awkward, through still trying his best. The little bot settled then onto his lap, letting go of him but still clearly determined to stay where she was. Her little feet kicked just a little, over the side of Soundwave's knees, as she happily unwrapped another jelly treat she'd fetched from her storage compartment, and ate it, without any obvious care in the world.

"What?" The youngling exclaimed a short second later, shrugging almost comically, with a mouth still filled with jellied energon, when Knockout rolled close to them, still belted into the seat of his mobility cart.

Knockout was obviously about to say something. And the look on his face-plate was one of clear dread and apology for what his youngling had done. And he rolled forward for just a second at a slightly faster speed, making it clear with his outreached right arm, that his every intention was to scoop the youngling bot up from Soundwave's lap, to carry her away again, on his own. But then he paused in his tracks, shook his head just a little and laughed. He gave a smile then, one that showed without any words at all, that he understood just much his own small youngling had bridged a once close to unbridgeable gap. And he just turned and moved to roll away again, still laughing.

"And yes, I'll tell her for you," Cybershock said, looking Soundwave right in the optics as her creator retreated back into the crowd.

Soundwave, far from good with conversation, and used to conversing with younglings far less still, just looked at her for a long moment, confused. And he must have looked strange, at least to that youngling bot, in his baffled and hopeless expression. Because she giggled a little, still looking right at him.

"I'll tell my Mama for you that you the jelly treats are certainly interesting," Cybershock explained, after another moment and another small and cheerful laughing giggle.

She was gone a second after that, leaping suddenly down from his lap in one easy fast motion, before she ran off quickly into the small crowd of bots, that had come to mill about mostly closer to the centre of the room. She'd found her carrier in no time at all. And she pulled urgently at her arm from behind, obviously seeking some attention, until Arcee turned smiling, and the two began talking, wandering further away.

"How are you now, honestly?" Firestorm questioned. She wiggled closer on the the bench, took Soundwave's hand instantly in both of her own as she so loved to do, and shifted still closer to rest her head against the side of his body.

"I am alright," Soundwave answered, considering for just a short moment. He decided he really did mean it. "Tonight is... interesting."

"Cybershock was not a bit too much?"

"No."

Firestorm gave a sudden burst of laughter then. And she lifted her head again, to look up at him, exclaiming, "I thought for about a second, Knockout was going to offline because of his own creation, for doing that!"

"Her strange boldness was... unexpected," Soundwave mused out loud in reply. He may not have known a thing about younglings, but it seemed strange, even to him, for one to be that outgoing and confidant in her interactions with a bot she was only beginning to know at all.

"It's just like Arcee said," Firestorm reminded him, smiling bright as ever. "Like it or not, you've got hero status to that kid now..."

The music, still playing away somewhere unseen, had changed again a moment before to another fast and cheerful upbeat track. And sitting silently again, Soundwave watched as bots simply had a decent time enjoying the music they all seemed to love. Knockout did his very best to 'dance' with Arcee. And strangely it seemed he could in his own way – holding her hands in his from his seated position on his cart, as they swung their arms happily in time to the song's complex beat, while she stood still on the floor. Arcee steeped forward then, after a moment of this, and sat quickly on her mate's knee's much like their own youngling often did, while he sent the cart into a couple fast spins in one place, with his hand on the control, before she jumped right off and took his hands again. Still close beside him, Soundwave heard Firestorm laugh out loud, watching them too. And he gave a good laugh himself, at his teammates clearly just having fun.

And nearby, Cybershock and Hotwire were doing their best to dance as well. Neither one had any clear sense of timing in the least. And both tiny bots just jumped and lifted their and waved and their arms at random with smiles on their face-plates. Switchblade wandered over to them slowly, her hesitation more than obvious at once. And Cybershock turned around immediately, inviting the third youngling to join in with a motion of her hand.

"I am glad you convinced me to come tonight," Soundwave said. And he smiled for a second, glad entirely that she had not let him miss his own party, as he'd wished to do at first.

"Do you perhaps have a few good dance moves?" Firestorm asked, smiling back. She laughed a little, and surely she was joking. Soundwave, to his own surprise, laughed loudly in reply to that, shaking his head wordlessly like he'd watched many others do so often, as he reflected to himself that the very idea was ridiculous.

"I certainly cannot dance" he said, not smiling anymore only because he could still not seem to make his badly damaged face-plate do that for long at once. "I would never tell you though of course that you cannot dance with anyone else."

"I don't dance either," Firestorm said, shaking her head just a little and looking suddenly just a little sad. "My processor... the balance issues... How could I have ever learned?" she smiled then though after just a second, looking back toward the others. "Let's both just watch instead."

"Babies!" she suddenly exclaimed just a moment later, when Speedbreaker made her way toward the pair, now carrying both of her yellow and orange newborn twins in her arms again. She got to her feet, with a grin on her face-plate, and eagerly took her turn at holding a tiny newborn in her arms, bouncing the tiny bot just a little, causing him to giggle and whir with a sound so clearly content.

"They just get cuter every time I see them," Firestorm said, still grinning at the baby. "This little guy is always so curious and happy."

"Would you like to hold his sister for a moment?" Speedbeaker said, still standing nearby. And Soundwave startled for a second, blinking in dismayed surprise to realize after a long clueless moment that the orange and silver bot was talking to him.

"Can... I...?" Soundwave questioned back, slowly and hesitant. Because strange as the idea seemed to him inside his own processor, he did want to try.

Firestorm, he knew well, held younglings every chance she got. And she was clearly good at it too, because most of them seemed to love her. But Soundwave had never even looked at a newborn youngling bot before, and he stiffened instantly, the second Speedbreaker placed her child into his arms, because he feared at once that he might just drop her. The baby, in turn began to fuss at once, and Soundwave feared perhaps she did not like him in the least, and may well even have been terrified of him. But watching Firestorm with the baby's twin, watching as she held him lightly, he loosened his own hold on the one he held, watching as she stopped her fussing at once, and smiled at him, whirring and buzzing, and grabbing for his fingertips.

Soundwave grinned then in return, just as much as he possibly could, as he stared in wonder at the youngling, who was just one of many destined to be born on the new world be could help with rebuilding.

"You make that look so easy," a voice said, behind him, right along with a friendly chuckling laugh. And Soundwave was, uncharacteristically, startled from his thoughts because. He turned around slowly, the baby bot still in his arms, to meet the increasingly familiar form of Ultra Magnus face plate to face-plate.

"Walk with me a moment, Soundwave," the blue painted police-bot said. And his voice was firm, but not at all unkind, as he reached out to almost smack Soundwave on the shoulder panel, but never did quite touch him. He sipped casually from the container filled with home brew high grade he held in his hand, without even blinking. Soundwave just nodded his agreement, uncertain of exactly was expected of him, and uneasy because of it. And it was with surprising reluctance, that he handed Speedbreaker's tiny youngling back to her.

"I wanted to personally congratulate you," the police-bot said, just a second later, as the two of them walked alone along the outer edge of the common room, heading toward the doors leading out. "I've been a loyal and active Autobot for centuries. You know I was a front line soldier before I came home to lead the law enforcement division... I never thought I'd see this day, Soundwave. You, loyal to our side, truly renouncing Decepticon ideals."

"I meant what I said that day, sitting in that cell downtown," Soundwave answered thoughtfully. And he tried not to think too hard of what it was he was saying exactly, because he understood more then ever now, all too well, that that would only lead to frustration and a processor conflict with his own language programming. "This is exactly what I really want."

"During your initiation, you will be asked why," Ultra Magnus reminded him, clearly meaning only to be helpful. The common room doors slid open, and the two of them stepped out into the corridor, and away from the noise and the crowd inside the room. "Knockout will likely repeat the one he prepared for himself years ago, at least roughly so. Have to decided on the wording of your own yet?" The police-bot though held up a hand, before Soundwave could answer. And he gave another slight chuckle, under his intakes. "You don't need to tell me. Not today. I'll hear your answer at you initiation, right along with everyone else."

"You are attending then I would assume?" Soundwave questioned. And he realized only after held finished his question, just how hopeful his voice had sounded. This bot was one he had come to respect greatly. And to understand that he may indeed attend gave him some sense of relief somehow.

"I can't imagine missing it," Ultra Magnus said, smiling with something that looked suspiciously like pride.

He killed his drink then, finishing at least half of a container of the stuff at once. And then he simply stashed the now empty container in his storage compartment, and stood up even straighter for a second, before he gave a good loud laugh.

"I spent years of my career commanding the Wreckers," he said, without another much quieter laugh. "You better believe I learned well over those years, to drink their near toxic sludge they call a great time, just as well as any one of them!"

"I've never been one to enjoy... intoxicating substances very much at all," Soundwave admitted slowly. And he stumbled over the words just the slightest bit, because the very subject of drinking was not one that came up for him enough for his processor to have familiarized itself with the words for such a thing. The blue police-bot just chuckled again.

"Prob'ly for the best I should think," he remarked, with a hint of a nod.

"I wonder, Soundwave," he said, after a very brief silence. "Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?"

"No... Sir," Soundwave stumbled just a little more now, mostly with simply trying to work out exactly how to address this bot in the first place. And he startled a little more still, at the question.

"I can easily see it's certainly a little far from your... err... previous work experiences," Ultra Magnus answered. An again he expended a hand to very close to Soundwave's shoulder, but never touched his armour. "You were always a computer and coding bot – with a sub specialty in infiltration of course. But you are building a good reputation around the city for your fearlessness and skill in hand to hand combat and take downs. You are more than capable of protecting the innocent of this growing city. Those skills once learned in the worst of the world's fighting pits can certain do some real good in this new world of ours. I have no doubt at all, I could use a bot just like you on the portal force."

"I..." Soundwave just stammered horribly in his confusion, because he could not image what it was he should say next. "Thank you, Sir... for..."

"Think on it a while," Ultra Magnus said. And he smiled a little again with assurance clear in his optics. "Don't don't be a stranger. You knew where to find me downtown if you ever wanna chat a while."

Soundwave just nodded.

* * *

 _Several days later_

Wheeeeeeee..." Cybershock yelled just a bit too loudly in the middle of her family's apartment living room. She spun around in constant circles, balanced on her feet, with her arms out beside her, while she laughed happily.

"Cybershock," said Arcee, her concern more than clear. "You are going to fall right on your tail pipe, if you keep that up."

"I won't fall down, Mama," the youngling answered laughing. "I never fall." She just went on spinning, and Arcee just shook her head.

"What did you put in our kid's energon this evening?" Arcee asked her bondmate, mostly joking, while he sat on his cart beside the sofa she was on. He simply shrugged in response, and to Arcee's great dismay, he was himself spinning around right along with their youngling not a second later – his hand on the control, pushing the cart steadily to the right so that it kept up a spin instead of moving forward.

"The question now..." Arcee muttered to herself, chuckling, while she stood to pick up discarded holovid left laying on the floor, "is who convinced who first that, that spinning around endlessly in the middle of my living room would possibly be such great fun..."

"Cybershock," Knockout exclaimed, laughing like a youngling bot himself. "Switch directions for a while. Now we've gotta go the other way!" He was instantly pushing left now on his hand control. And Cybershock, pausing just a moment, stumbling badly after having clearly only just then realized she had made herself dizzy, began to slowly spin around the other way as well, before quickly picking up speed.

"Silly bots," Arcee mumbled, under her intakes, with another shake of her head just watching them both another second, and secretly glad as anything that neither one of them begged her to join in their silliness.

She wandered slowly then out to the entryway of the apartment, where she set to work polishing chrome surfaces of her home, tidying up here and there and quickly a few energon containers into a small sanitzer in the corner of a counter underneath a small red curtained window. She reached up then, to pull the curtains open, and stood for a moment, looking out at a pair of vehicle modes, clearly engaged in some illegal racing down 'main street' far below. She chuckled just slightly, shook her head over young bots having downtown, and tossed the rag in her hand, into the sanatizer along with the containers, making sure to place it below the bottom rack.

When she turned back around again, after starting the machine, Knockout was behind her, watching her with a smile on his face-plate. And he was standing now, leaning forward just a little on the handlebars of his walking frame, and holding himself up like that with some apparent strength.

"I put a holovid on for Cybershock to watch," he said. "That strange little kid's science show from Earth she loves so much. She is... a bit tired now from all that spinning..."

"You two are equally ridiculous you know," Arcee told him, smiling in his direction. "Her tendency toward such ridiculous behaviour... it came from your part in her coding."

"I retain the right to plead no contest." Knockout smirked. And he took a small slow step forward, leaning on the walking frame he held onto in front of him. "And you can't say your life here with us isn't interesting."

"That I certainly can't," Arcee replied, with another smile and a laugh, before the sound of their youngling rummaging far too loudly through her toy box, pulled her from her thoughts. The toy Cybershock selected to play with, was, as luck would have it, the noisiest of any she owned. And her small feet stomped a little on the floor, as she rushed around the living room, excitedly again busy in loud play with the thing.

"You're still so sure you really want another one?" Knockout asked, turning just as much as he could without losing his balance while standing up, so that he could look vaguely in the direction of their child a room away. He asked the question in a tone of doubt. But Arcee knew full well his doubt was far from real by now. He was just as in love with the idea of a second youngling as she was by then. And he talked about it just as much as she did... even day dreaming out loud about any names that might sound good along side 'Cybershock,' and where they might set up the youngling basket once again.

"Just as sure as anything," Arcee said, her tone self assured, while she walked a few steps to stand closer to him. And she looked him over, smiling a little.

"It's so great to see you on your feet so much now," she told him, smiling brighter. "You're standing so much straighter too. I'd almost forgotten how tall you actually are."

"Spending time on my feet just as much as I can, is the only way I'll ever make real gains now," Knockout reminded her, smiling back. "Just like Ratchet always says... practice practice, because practice makes perfect."

Arcee took another step toward her bondmate, and slowly reached out, arms extended, and ready to hug him. But then she stopped again, pausing right in mid-motion, and looked at him, uncertain.

"Can I?" she asked, concerned she might easily knock him off balance and cause him to fall. It wads after all, still not difficult to do, and he still fell too often without anyone causing it at all But he simply nodded, a slight laugh coming from under his intakes at once.

"Of course you can," he said, and he chuckled once again. "Just don't make a running start... like some much smaller bot of ours seems to..."

"Can you let go of the walking frame at all yet?" Arcee questioned slowly, once she'd gently put her arms around him, and let her head rest against the front of his body, without him moving to hug her back.

"Maybe..." he mumbled, thoughtlessly and happy, in reply. "Kind of... for just a second or two..."

Knockout had never yet tried to let go at all before. And he knew he certainly could not come close to lifting both hands from his handlebars completely with any hope at all of standing that way. But he did lean slightly more onto his right side, his stranger arm managing to hold him balanced, while he slowly lifted the left away from the bar just enough to wrap the arm hesitantly around his mate's body.

"Do you think you may be carrying already, as we speak?" he asked her, changing the topic of discussion back to the one they'd strayed from. She she shook her head slightly without even lifting it off his armour.

"I was scanned just this morning," she said. And her tone was suddenly a little sad then. "Negative for any new spark again..."

"We haven't been actively trying for long yet," Knockout reminded her, confidently. "We just need to keep on spark merging often with our inhibitors in their off settings..." he paused then, let go of her so he could hold onto the frame with both hands again, because he was about to lose his balance, and grinned at him when she moved to look at him in concern. "It isn't as though we aren't having fun with exactly that."

"That we certainly do."

"I almost forgot," Knockout muttered slowly. And he shook his head over his own carelessness, before he took several slow, careful steps with the walking frame toward the cabinet closest to the apartment door, right next to the energon dispenser. With some hesitation he let go of the frame, again with one hand, so that he could pull open a drawer. And finally he pulled out a datapad he'd stashed inside.

"Ultra Mangus dropped this off today, not long before you got back from work," he explained. And too tired out to keep on standing like he was, he sat himself down carefully, in a chair turned sideways next to their small table, still holding the pad in his hand. "It pertains to Switchblade's case file." He paused then, shook his head quickly and muttered... "well the bot Known as Switchblade for now's case file anyway. She wants to change her name... made it clear on the ward today she won't answer to her old name anymore. And the kid means business too. I have no idea if it's good news or bad in here..." he held up the data pad again

"I'm not sure I really wanna know.." Arcee mumbled right back. She took the pad from her mate, but instead of powering it on right away, she just stood, staring at it, and sadly shaking her head.

Arcee had promised that youngling she would find a permanent home for her. And the promise of that had seemed easy enough to fulfill. That hope however had been proven wrong in a hurry and finally all but dashed entirely, when the weeks wore into into nearly two long months without a single application from an interested bot. She and Knockout had discussed, at ever increasing length, that they might just take the little one themselves, as they did after all, want to expand their own family. But that was conflict of interest, and both of them know it. While not technically illegal, they both knew it just seemed wrong... or at least it was while hope still remained of some other option.

The news, she reminded herself quickly, could not possibly be all that bad. The youngling after all, could not exactly be removed from the care of the Autobot military until she had a home to go to. And it was certain not related to her health and condition, because that was Knockout's department. And he would have of course simply told her himself, if he'd had bad news about all that. With a slow intake, and a little shake of her head, Arcee powered on the pad in her hands. And for a moment she just stood, blinking after she'd read over it twice.

"It's an application to adopt," she said, her hands slightly shaky because she couldn't believe what it was she was reading on the pad. She leaned forward a little, moving to set the pad down on the counter top. But she changed her mind again, and just held it, absently, while she stood, shaking her head in disbelief. She finally looked at it again, reading the short document a third time, because she was almost sure she'd ready something wrong in the simply lines of code. "Submitted this morning by... Bulkhead."

"Is that so truly shocking to you?" Knockout asked. His tone was too casual and his question was surprising.

"Well... yes..." Arcee just mumbled back. Confusion, surprise, uncertainty and shock circled through her processor all at once, and she just shook her head again. She finally set the pad down. And for a second she stood staring at it, still questioning its contents, in her own processor.

"If you could just see them together as much as I do," Knockout answered, still collected and clearly understanding far better than his still shocked mate did. "Talking to each other on the youngling ward... Bulk's visited her every day for over a month. He's become the family she lost and probably never had at all. He's held her on his lap more than once for scans and energon tests... let her cry and be sad... sat reading to her until she falls into recharge... Bulkhead loves that youngling, just as though she was his own." Knockout gestured with his optics toward the pad left on the counter top. "There's sure no doubt left about that now... To give her to some other bot to raise now, that might just break his poor spark."

"I love Bulk' like a big protective brother," Arcee mused, still shaken. "He's got enough spark for us all. But I never dreamed I'd ever see that big clumsy brute on the playground with a youngling of his own..."

"He's already begging me to give the youngling an afternoon pass away from the hospital so he can take her there to play for a while. I told him she's got one for tomorrow."

Instead of any answer at all, to her mate's last comment, Arcee found herself suddenly laughing, as she remembered watching the little green bot, balanced well on Bulk's huge feet while he danced with her at Soundwave's initiation party. She remembered so perfectly the joyful smile clear across the youngling bot's face-plate, and the look of happiness on Bulkhead's as he so willingly made a silly fool of himself just to make the little youngling laugh. There was far more than that to raising and caring for a youngling bot. Arcee knew that first hand now, and far better and anybot that had never been a parent would ever hope to understand. But it was a start and certainly a good one.

"I'll comm Bulk tomorrow," she said seriously. "I need to invite him in for a formal meeting."


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes/ Another chapter that's ended up all over the place emotionally, with things starting out all fluffy and wonderful, only to quickly go bad and then get even worse... but then really isn't that how life goes sometimes. I do suppose it's all reflective of reality. This is a longer chapter too!**

 **I'm in no huge rush to start a new fanfiction project. Because of course this one is not half done yet. But I am kicking around a new plot regardless, because it won't leave me alone. And I wonder if anyone might be interested in such a thing when I do decide to get to it. I'd like to write an alternate universe TFP story in which the 'cons have won the war, and featuring a few controversial or strange pairings. I know it's been done... and done. But I've liked a few such stories because it is of course different. And I think I could put my own spin on it, just like I did with the old almost overdone defector plot. Feedback and opinions welcome on that idea.**

 **I fully realize that the bots in this story are becoming a little less in character now, if that's the best way to put it. Soundwave speaking more and more... Knockout happily working as a youngling doctor, and actually very good with 'children.' Ratchet humming songs and laughing, showing he might actually have a sense of humor. With war behind them though, it only makes sense to me that they would all become different. So when I started writing them, I started to think... what could they become if they could be what they were meant to outside of all the fighting for their planet and their lives. Ratchet, for example has certainly always been a cranky old bot with limited patience... but he's always reminded me as well of someone's old grandfather, who loves telling stories of 'waaaay back in the day.'**

Firestorm hummed to herself, smiling brightly as she unpacked things from a crate sitting open on the floor, and onto the built-in shelves that lined part of the wall of the small recharge room. A small stack of data pads went onto the bottom shelf, beside the music player. And a decent stack of data discs that played in that, sat nearly on the top. Then there were small photo frames – one that held a still image of herself as a youngling aside her brother in the dingy dull hallway of the ship that had been her youngling-hood home, and one of her creator and carrier, still somewhere on old Cybertron.

She picked up the second of the photo-frames, just as soon as she'd set it down carefully on the shelf. And just as carefully, she held it in her hands, just staring for a long moment at the image of the bots that had made her. She stopped her quiet humming then, and moved off her knees to sit a moment on the recharge room floor, smiling because to her, because of that one photo she had ever seen of them, they would to her to have been nothing short of happy.

"You have never displayed photo-frames before," said Soundwave, clearly surprised. He stood in the doorway of the recharge room. And Firestorm realized he was there at all, only after he had spoken to her. She saw the slight smile on his face-plate at once, and she smiled right back.

"It just never seemed right to for a while..." she said, trying to explain, and somehow feeling silly. "It does now..."

"Those are... your creators?" Soundwave asked, his tone curious as he kneeeled on the floor beside her. And he leaned forward to look closer at the image displayed in the frame.

"You look so much like them," he added, when she nodded in answer to his question.

And Firestorm just smiling, laughing a little because it certainly was true. She looked again at the bots in the photo-file – her creator, with his almost entirely white paint job highlighted here and there with bold stripes of bright yellow. And her carrier, with his yellow pale yellow paint, broken up on either side of his body by bands of bright white. Anybot could see in an instant of looking, just how she and her brother were so clearly a fair mix of them both.

"I wasn't the only one to look like them," she said, still smiling, as she reached for the photo-file frame still on the shelf, and realizing then that Soundwave had never actually seen an image before of her brother who she talked about so much.

"We might have easily passed for twins at times, if Windstorm had not been born two centuries before me," she said, smiling brighter then.

"I wish that I could show you an image of my carrier," Soundwave said, still kneeling on the floor. He smiled a tiny hint of a smile, bore that faded and he just shook his head a little. "I have never had a single photo-file of her. It is... doubtful a single one ever existed. Some bots that knew us used to say I looked just like her though... I have her colors."

Firestorm so clearly remembered the bot she had 'met' once in a dreamlike altered state of consciousness brought on by the cybermatter trials. And she smiled then, because she had never forgotten. Logic told her to assume it meant nothing at all. To assume that her greatest wish – to find her for her creation – had been represented through this vivid dream because her processor had the chance to play it out then. But still, hope had convinced her it could have meant far more, even if she had no idea at all, of what it all truly. And to hear now that that the colors she had seen might just have been real...

"Firestorm..." Soundwave said. And she slowly turned her head to look at him again, realizing only then that while he had been speaking to her for a moment already, she had been so distracted she hadn't heard a word he'd said.

"Are you alright?" he asked in clear concern, And Firestorm just nodded, smiling in his direction at once. She was going to tell him then that she really did believe his carrier was still alive somewhat, - that she believed she could find her – that she even had Ratchet almost open to helping her by then. But instead she said nothing, in case she was wrong in her confidence.

"Did you finish with the living room?" she questioned instead, standing up from the floor, as he stood up with her. And Soundwave just nodded, smiling for a second.

"Will you truly be happy in the place the council gave us?" he asked her though, a moment later. He looked around the recharge room, barely wide enough from one side to the other to fit their recharge station – and that itself slightly less than a standard full sized model. And his optics filled with concern.

"Of course I'll be happy here," Firestorm exclaimed. Her smile turned quickly to a grin. And she jumped slightly off her feet,flinging herself at him. This caused him to gave a small cry of surprise, as he caught her quickly before she could knock them both back onto the floor. But both bots laughed at once, stumbling a little toward the recharge station.

Any apartment on New Cybertron was small. But theirs was so small and cramped even by the new world standard – the living room was no bigger then the recharge room. A less than full size sofa had barely fit when they'd struggled, with help from a couple of the Autobots to force it in around the narrow doorway. And than the small table with just a couple of chairs had barely fit besides. The building was an old one too – a place salvaged for restoration from the wreckage of war instead of built in the post war construction boom. And she had loved the building from the moment they'd gone to see it, despite the known fact that so many bots – particularly younger ones it seemed – would surely have protested, appealing the council's assignment, even agreeing to a far longer wait on something less 'antiquated.' But Firestorm was not most others. And she'd been grinning, a smile clean across her face-plate, since she'd learned they had been selected for the old building.

"This building is... an ancient building," Soundwave said, his tone still clearly concerned. And he was clearly exaggerating just a little, because the building was not quite old enough to be called 'ancient,' even if it had been old already long before the end of the 'golden age.' His optics travelled to the grey dingy walls of the room, needing paint, and to the small barred window high on the far wall, covered by the old green curtains brought from the old recharge room on base, and that just didn't nearly seem to fit right anymore.

"It's a piece of old Cybertron," Firestorm cried, grinning. She stood, leaning against him, her head resting on his body armour for a moment, before she looked around the room again herself. "A little bit of history that just stayed standing! And we get to live here... just like bots lived here the first time the world was united and beautiful. And this is ours, Soundwave. It's really our home!"

"We can easily paint these walls," she said a second later, when she saw the worry had never left Soundwave's optics. And she grabbed him by the hand, to yank him playfully toward the furthest wall in her excitement. "The living room will need some too. And the entry way... and we can get new curtains from the marketplace, to fit this smaller window..." she waved toward the little window then, still grinning, before she almost leapt off the floor again to hug him.

"What about you?" she asked while he laughed a little, at her exuberance. "Will you be happy here?"

"Any place I live in now, will always be so many times more than anything I once dreamed I'd have have..." Soundwave said, serious as ever. He pulled her tight against his armour. And for a while he just held her like that, while she smiling, understanding his wards had not be intended to be sad, but... hopeful.

"I am simply concerned for you" he said then, after a moment, explaining his worried looks of moments before. "You should have a much nicer home... a bigger one, in the new housing divisions somewhere."

"But..." Firestorm said firmly. She took an excited step backwards, and stared up at him, just as soon as he slowly let her go again. "I want _this_ one."

"Look at this wonderful view!" she cried, running at once to the window, and pulling open the too-long and overhanging curtains, so that she could look down... and down... and still further down. "Forty-second floor. We can see the whole city from here... the mountains... the sulphur field and the river! Soundwave, if I could just reach out far enough I could almost touch the sky!"

"You do truly love to be close to the sky," Soundwave observed. He smiled again, crossing the room quickly to double check a perch he'd mounted earlier to a side wall above the built-in shelves, for Laserbeak – who sat, at present on top of the highest shelf, whirring her excitement.

"Yes," Firestorm answered at once, because she hadn't changed her mind about that very same feeling in the least. "I want to be as high as I can ever go! I would touch the atmosphere and the edge of space if I could. And..." she paused then, her excitement rushing up through her spark. "I'm really going have a flying alt mode! You won't need to carry me forever!"

"I like to carry you, Firestorm," Soundwave answered, smiling for the moment he could at any one time. He hurried back to her again "You are not heavy... and I know it makes you happy."

"I know you like to," Firestorm said. And she smiled brighter again, stepping closer, and grabbing Soundwave's hands in hers again, swinging their hands back and forth together, laughing a little. "I might still let you at times, you know... at least until I take off ahead just to see if you can ever catch me."

"You will be a beautiful flyer, Firestorm," Soundwave answered, in a tone that made it clear he meant it.

"Thank you," the little white and yellow bot said, grinning bigger than before, even as her tank rolled horribly again. "And thank you for your support of me wanting to be."

"What else would make you happy?" Soundwave asked then. He smiled again, and led her backwards a few steps to the recharge station, where he pulled her down gently to sit beside him.

"Just those new curtains I mentioned already for that window," she said simply. " And perhaps a pretty cover for the sofa... a floor lamp or two..."

"There must be more than that..."

"Nope."

"Those things you have requested... they are all so simple...

"I'm a very simple sort of bot," Firestorm said, grinning. Her voice turned to mock seriousness then as she added slowly, "there is one more thing that would make me happy..."

"Oh?" Soundwave looked at her intently, interested.

"Hugs," Firestorm exclaimed, playful and laughing. "One or two everyday... maybe three... most of them from you of course!"

"I had best... practice then," Soundwave answered, laughing back as he hugged her at once.

"Well," replied Firestorm quickly, hugging him right back before the both let each other go again. "They say practice really does make perfect."

She watched, in a corner of her vision, as Laserbeak flew down from her place on top of the shelving. And still smiling, she extended an arm, easily catching the small flying bot, who chirped cheerfully and perched on her at once. Firestorm's optics went back to the curtains though in just another moment. And she shook her head, laughing a little in their direction.

"Those have got to go," she said, decidedly – because Soundwave had asked, in all seriousness for her honest opinions in the first place. "They just fit so... badly." Soundwave, to her amusement, shook his head with dismay of his own, while he too studied the window.

"Perhaps you would like to make a short trip out to the shops," he said. "I will finish this unpacking of the apartment while you are out, and take down those... ill-fitting window coverings..."

"I can't convince you to come with me?" Firestorm asked, grinning again, as she pulled playfully on one of his hands with the one not holding the bird. She was perfectly capable of a simple trip to the shops own her own, obviously. And she knew he would never willingly agree to brave the crowds without any notice. Still she asked him anyway, and was not at all surprised when he just shook his head.

"Take your time," he said, smiling a little for another short moment. "Perhaps one of your friends would like to meet with you today. And you may well find other things you'd like for this place too."

"I won't be long," Firestorm answered, certain as anything that a day out with any friends of hers was not what she wanted at all even half as much as hurrying back home to help him finish with their new home.

She wasn't in the mood for shopping at all- never had enjoyed it nearly as much as many bots seemed to. But they really did need the new curtains... and she realized by now they were short on wash station rags and towels. And she had no washing solvent left at all. So she sent Laserbeak flying off her outstretched arm again with a motion of her free hand. Smiled a fast good bye to Soundwave, and hurried out the door.

Stepping out into the hallways of the old apartment building officially known in the city by then as 'building one,' she realized for the first time, just how run down the place really was. The paint on the walls of the forty-second floor corridor, was peeling and chipped, and in some places the wear was bad enough that bare silvery wall showed in large patches. And those same walls – which had once clearly been a nice light blue - were stained in various colours in places, and contained a few decent sized holes. Still, Firestorm liked the old building no less, and she even smiled a little, considering the age of the place and the war it had survived along with the bots. Of course it would be run down, she reasoned, chuckling. She could hardly blame it.

The elevator had seen far better days too, of course – its door just as beat up stained and dented as the walls of the hallway were. And inside it was simple at best, drab white with a strange stale smell coming from somewhere in a corner. But its touch pad worked perfected and the elevator moved just a fast as any in the city. And it reached the twenty-third floor, to let others on, quickly.

"Well look at that," one bot – a dull pained black and green one - said to another, as a pair of them boarded the elevator. "It's your little glitch case from that sweet shop. And she certainly looks... functional by now."

Firestorm's attention was on them entirely at once. And her spark beat quickened with dread.

"Ha. So it is indeed," the other one answered back quickly. "You live in building one now then? Somewhere on the upper floors I can assume? You'll be a fine addition to this... neighbourhood of ours." And all at once he began to laugh.

Firestorm looked him over fast, the familiar red and white of his dented body work, causing her to cringe involuntarily. She forced herself to keep on looking his way however, well aware that to lower her gaze would only show dangerous weakness, and took a careful step back, putting distance between them in the small elevator.

"What's the matter, my little shop-bot?" the red and while fellow asked her, smirking. "We woulda had some real fun last time we met, if we hadn't been so rudely... interrupted."

His green and black buddy laughed hard. And Firestorm cringed again, praying at once that neither bot had seen her do it.

"That freak boyfriend of yours isn't here to come between us this time," the red and white bot chuckled horribly. And he stepped forward slowly, with a look of mock disbelief on his face-plate. "Guy's certainly got some anger issues..."

Firestorm's hand clenched into fists at that. And boldly she stepped toward the offending bot, with little thought for danger.

"Shut your mouth," she demanded recklessly, standing taller, trying hard to look just as big as she could for a small mini-bot. "Pit spawned, fragging pervert."

Both large bullies burst into laughter. And to Firestorm's immediate dread, the green and black one paused the further decent of the elevator with a touch of his hand on the controls.

"Soundwave, I'm almost afraid of," the red and white bot said though laughter. "That bot is certainly scary even after his... obvious... hmm... fall from so close to the top! But you... trying ta yell at me like a big bot... That's just... cute!"

"My friend here..." the black and green bot said, pointing toward his buddy and grinning sickly beside him. "He likes 'em just a little feisty... bots that ain't afraid to speak their minds. I think he could just love you... well as a plaything anyways."

"Ha, don't you worry, my friend," the red and white bot said to his green and black friend. "Yeah she's sure a decent catch, but I'm happy to let you play with her too."

Disgusted, and growing more uneasy by the second, Firestorm shoved desperately past the aggressive pair of bots larger than herself. And she reached at once for the controls mounted on wall, determined to get the elevator moving again, ride it down to the bottom floor, where she would get off fast. But unsurprisingly the red and white bot grabbed her arm at once, shoving her hard against the wall. And she cringed at once, not liking the placement of his other hand, far too close to her... pleasure equipment... at all. He pressed himself against her hard, and she was almost glad to find he smelled this time of sulphur, instead of strong high grade.

"I can treat you well, my little mini-bot," he mumbled into her audio receptor, while he hand rubbed against her sickeningly, and his friend just stood by, laughing. "I know your type, You think you love that boyfriend of yours... you think you wanna be with him forever. You prob'ly wanna be his bondmate... have a couple of his younglings... But you don't know what love is... who could love that piece of trash?"

"Get fragged..." Firestorm mumbled, her growing anger almost greater than any fear now. And the red and white brute just laughed loudly, his hand rubbing a questionable part of her body armour all the while, and a sick grin on his face-plate.

"Oh, I plan to do exactly that," he laughed, still close to her audio receptor. "I'm sure we'll both have a good time with that."

"No, thank you." Firestorm spoke just as firmly as she could manage, her optics narrowing at one on the offender, while she wiggled back, away from his roughly groping hand. And she gasped hard, in horrified shock not a second later, when his hand – the one not still groping all the while, held her by the neck and slammed her against the elevator wall hard enough to shake her body armour.

"Nobody says no to me," he barked. And his fist hit her face-plate, drawing energon from a crack he caused to it at once. "I don't do 'no', and you'll learn that right now You dare say no to me again, I swear I'll beat you to such a pile of scrap metal and bolts, you'll never be identified."

Firestorm, fighting back tears, felt her face-plate with her fingertips. But she realized somewhere in the back of her mind not a second later that she needn't have bothered to. The energon splatter that landed on on the floor made it clear just how badly she must have been bleeding from just a single hit.

"Soundwave is going to kill you," she said, threatening because she had no real way out of her situation in mind. It was not entirely just an idle threat however and she knew it.

"That is what he was always good at," the red and white bot snarled. And without any reason at all, he hit Firestorm hard again, across the front of her face-plate. She heard something shatter, and energon poured onto the front of her body armour. "Killing. That's what he was you know? A viscous mindless killer. All Cybertron knows it. Soundwave had no spark in the war that off-lined millions of our people And he's surely just as sparkless now. You sure you how to pick 'em, femme. And it almost makes you a trader to our world... one worth nothing more than what I've got in mind for you."

"Let me go," Firestorm said, almost begging now because it was clear that anger hadn't worked. She thought of punching him, and her hand formed a fist again. But the fear of a another hard hit forced her to stop at once. And she watched in horror as he opened his lowest front panel, exposing himself with a gloating smile on his horrid red face-plate.

"Not gonna happen, femme," he said, snarling. "I'm gonna have my fun. My friend there is gonna have his. Then you might just turn up one day, washed up on the banks on the Boiling River..." His hand pressed tight against her own panel, and other pressed dangerously hard on her neck. "Open your panel..."

Behind him, his friend just kept laughing.

"Help," Firestorm screamed then. And she knew it was hardly unreasonable that someone might just have head her, inside a huge apartment building. Besides there was sure to be a small growing crowd of bots by then, waiting on the floor closest to them for an elevator they surely assumed by then, must have jammed somewhere on its track. And she let those surely waiting bots hear her urgency and panic. "Help me!"

The red and while bot hit her again for her trouble, again in the face-plate, before he threw her roughly to the floor on her knees. Hit foot kicked her at least four times then, close to her closed spark chamber. And to her horror, his friend soon joined in, with much heavier feet.

Another kick, this time to the head, and Firestorm felt herself half way to falling unconscious. She was sure she screamed again, but she could not be certain exactly. More kicks followed. More hard punches to her body. More energon dripped onto the floor. Firestorm saw the glowing light blue of it a little too clearly as her vision clouded, and her tank flipped with pain. Something shiny glinted in front of her optics, now displaying urgent warnings from her processor, alerting her to imminent system shut down. One of the two attackers had pulled a blade...

"Hey!" the voice that yelled, suddenly and right out of nowhere, was different from the other two.

And looking up, through still clouding and spinning visuals, Firestorm barely managed to understand that the elevator doors were open now. High above her, right above the now open doors, a light showed a small number '1.' They had reached the ground floor.

"You two fellows want to explain yourselves, before I toss you both in the lockup?" the new voice continued. Ultra Magnus. Firestorm recognized the police bot now, through her fog. And she watched the haze of blue step closer, mixing with the hazes of red and green, and the hints of black and white.

"Sure do," the voice of the red and white bot said, absurdly. "This femme here... we... we waz just ridin' down with her already on, and she... she attacked us both right outta nowhere. No reason at all. We... we waz defending ourselves."

The other bot, of course just laughed again. His laughter however sounded terribly nervous now.

"That's a pile of scrap if I've ever heard one," Ultra Magnus answered, not wasting a second. "Both of you get your hands on that wall. Now!"

Firestorm knew he said more. She was sure the others did two. But their voices were all dissolving fast into nothing but noise. Her head pounded and everything spun faster. She was sure she must have purged her tank, as her vision went black...

* * *

Despite his original unease the place had brought him, Bulkhead was becoming very familiar with the hospital's youngling ward **.** And he sat in there now, in a too familiar too small chair, in a familiar room at the end of the corridor. He stared idly across the room, at the screen for the data disc player – on which was currently playing some random Earth documentary, hosted by a low voiced human narrator, all about complex social structures of 'carpenter ants.' Bulkhead chuckled a little, watching the strange creatures shown running about all over the screen, sure as at from what he remembered of such things on Earth, that ants were nowhere near as big as they seemed in that film.

"Bulk... head..." Switchblade – or by then known far more, though still informally, as Switchgear - mumbled slowly, from her position sprawled across his lap... exactly where she had dozed into recharge only a few minutes into watching that nature documentary.

"Hey Switch,'" Bulk' said, chuckling a little. He shifted slightly in the too small chair, trying to get comfortable. But even though she was awake again, he lacked all spark to make her move, because she looked strangely comfortable with her head somewhere under the height of his chest panel, one leg still over his knee, one dragging near the floor and her one arm neatly over the front of her small green frame. A recharging position that surely only a youngling would wake from, not groaning with the pain of kinked wires.

Bulkhead sat still then for a long moment, just watching the still nearly sleeping youngling – his youngling. It still felt strange to him, and he could barely believe it was true. But he had a youngling. It didn't matter to him that he hadn't created her himself. In his own processor and spark, she was just as much his as any youngling was to their own creators. And he'd had no hesitation at all in telling exactly that to various members of the council who had so clearly doubted a former wrecker 'built only for punching things' as they had so ignorantly put it, could possibly give a tiny damaged bot everything she needed in life. They argued that his life was bound to change in more ways then he could possibly imagine when he took on the role of parent to a youngling. And he'd said right back that change was not always a terrible thing. No one knew what to expect when they created newsparks of their own, when they chose to carry them to term and build their first frames. And he'd asked the bots of the council, how that lack of complete foresight made his own case any different when it came to this youngling he hadn't made himself, but loved as though he had.

He knew that many bots, and likely most of them in fact, would never really understand why he – unbonded and happy that way, a former wrecker, a veteran of war – would want to invent the next century of his life in a youngling, not actually his, fully by his own choice. Still a good handful of those same bots – his greatest of friends (nearly family in fact,) the bots he fought beside for centuries, were the first to cheer the loudest when they'd learned the council had finally signed off on Bulk's request to raise the tiny bot himself. Because those closest of his friends trusted him entirely to know what he truly wanted in his spark.

"I guess I fell in-ta recharge," Switchgear mumbled. And she moved now, sitting herself up on the much larger bot's lap, before she rolled her optics at him and laughed just a little. "I told you Cybershock's science discs would prob'ly be too boring..."

"I think I need to get us a few good action movies," Bulk' answered laughing just a little too. And he was impressed at once to see the youngling's face-plate light up with interest at mention of the films he enjoyed the most.

"Yeah," Switch' cheered quietly, before she shook her head with obvious disinterest at the disc currently playing.

"Miko will love you," Bulk' laughed, surprising himself with the sudden mention of 'his' human, right out of nowhere. And instantly the little youngling turned her head to look him in the optics.

"Will I really get to meet her some day?" she asked.

"Well sure," Bulkhead grinned. "I don't see why not. Earth is really just a space bridge away."

"Earth?" Switch' was truly excited now. And she bounced in her stand-in creator's lap, grinning brightly. "I'll get to see that strange organic world from your stories?"

"Yep," Bulk' just smiled back. "Someday." He paused a moment. And remembering how he'd seen other younglings seem to clearly enjoy such a thing, he hugged her tightly against him for a second and shook her a little, playfully. Sure enough she giggled loudly.

Her giggling stopped though suddenly. And she sat still again on Bulkhead's lap, watching the small clock on a wall above the wash station door across the room. Her remaining hand bent and unbent again a few times, before she began to tap her fingers against the chair's arm – something Bulkhead easily guessed could only have meant nerves and unease.

"Ya gettin' nervous about your repairs, little bot?" he asked, reaching around her easily, to hold her tiny hand in one of his huge ones.

"Yeah..." the youngling admitted at once. And she looked again at the small clock across the room. Not long at all to go now, Bulk' saw after a glance at the same clock himself. No wonder 'his' kid was getting so nervous then.

"It's a good thing though, remember?" Bulkhead said, smiling a little, and hoping for a little smile back from the uneasy youngling. "A brand new arm for you kid... And some new front body armour...

"Yep," the youngling said, smiling now and clearly excited right along with her anxiety. "I've waited so long..."

"That you certainly did. And today's the day."

"Yeah..."

"Hey, it's okay to be a bit nervous you know..."

The youngling just smiled a little then, still swinging her little legs back and forth in her seated position. She still looked uneasy. Any youngling bot and most adults certainly would have been by then. But it was clearly far less, and that was good to see.

"I'm glad the council gave me to you to take care of," she said thoughtfully.

"I am too," Bulkhead said back.

He would take her home very soon, to his home which was still barely ready for a youngling at all. And he'd show her the small recharge room, he had by now almost finished making for her, out of his large extra storage room. And she would have toys, and data pads filled with stories...and he would take her to the youngling centre, where she so badly wanted to go to learn and play with other younglings. She and Cybershock were fast becoming friends. That much was clear. And Bulk' chuckled to himself at once when he realized he of any bot was suddenly thinking of planned play dates.

"I just hope I'm good enough for the job," he said slowly, deciding it was best to be honest with her when he spoke of such serious things, so that she would learn easily to always be too. "I still don't know much about kids."

"That's okay, Bulk'" the little bot said, grinning for a second then. "You're learning fast so far."

"I'm sure I'll make some serious mistakes..."

"Things happen. Just... don't burn the building down."

"That's only a worry I think, little bot, if Wheeljack ever stops over," Bulkhead answered with a joking smile on his face-plate.

It seemed to him a little strange and worrisome for a just a second, to joke in any way about his home burning down, particularly given this youngling's still very recent damages caused by a fiery explosion inside her previous home. But she had joked about it first, showing him so clearly that she wanted to simply face it all and move on quickly. And his answer back just made her laugh, and shake her head a little.

Her laughter stopped abruptly though again, and this time it was clearly the sudden knock on the halfway open door of the room, that had made her stop laughing. Knockout rolled quickly into the room followed immediately by Bumblebee, who pushed a supply cart in front of him, filled with all manner of medical supplies.

"Well good morning, Little Bot?" Knockout said to the youngling, calm and smiling assurance all the while, as he rolled himself closer to her. Bumblebee, still standing behind the supply cart, smiled at her too. But he was obviously nervous, doubting himself, as it as known he still did, and more so still when working with younglings. "All ready to rock and roll?"

"Yeah..." the youngling said, quietly and looking down at the floor. But she sounded so doubtful. And no sooner had she answered than she added hesitantly, "...no. I...I duuno..."

"I'm just going to scan you quick, before I do anything else," Knockout explained. And Switchgear nodded, calmly enough. Because of course she knew as well as anyone that scanning was a simple thing that certainly didn't hurt. "Let's get you laying down flat on your recharge station for a minute." He spoke in that same tone he was known for so well by then with younglings – talking to her just like she was obviously more than mature enough to understand grown up tone and language - while he gestured easily toward the recharge station.

Bumblebee was more than happy enough to promptly scoop the little bot up from the floor not a second after she'd gotten to her feet. And he spun once, fast, with her in his his arms legs swinging outward, before he quickly dropped her giggling a little onto the recharge station she could easily get onto and off of by herself.

"Well, that certainly is odd," said Knockout, smiling a little and clearly joking around entirely, while he held the scanner down close to the tiny bot's feet. "I can't seem to locate any processor function... though it's clear the patient is obviously functional, because she is giggling and moving!"

Knockout held the scanner up again, in his slightly stronger right hand, and gave an over the top kind of shrug of his shoulders, before he proceeded to tap the scanner against the armrest of his cart, just as though question whether the thing may actually have been broken. He scanned her little green feet again, moving slowly up to the knees and back down, shrugged again, and looked at Bulkhead, pretended to be entirely baffled by his findings. He looked then toward 'Bee, who just shrugged, and made an all to silly show of looking helpless.

"Sorry," he said, shaking his head now, while Knockout discretely nodded his approval at the younger bot. "I'm just a med student..."

"Wrong end of my body," the youngling said, giggling at both of them. "You gotta scan my head!"

"Hmm..." Knockout mused, still joking around entirely, and far more than he'd ever seemed close to learning to do in times of war. "Well I suppose there could be some slight chance I could be doing this wrong..." He moved the scanner slowly over her small body, pausing again when he finally reached her head. Then he tipped his head sideways just a little, and carefully studied the scanner before he looked again at the tiny bot and smiled. "Ah. There it is!"

The youngling bot burst into laughter then. And now Bulkhead just sat, shaking his head a moment.

But the little bot's happy laughter, quite predictably, stopped at once when the medi-bot put the scanner away and immediately pulled out his medical kit instead, from the side bin of his cart.

Energon line equipment in particular was easy enough to spot and recognize among even bots with little or no real medical knowledge at all – probably because it was so extremely common and universal. And even the tiny youngling so clearly understood exactly what it was, when she saw the old bot pull it out of his kit.

"This is... the first bit I was nervous about," the youngling admitted slowly. And she began to squirm and wiggle in her still laying position, making it more than clear she wanted to promptly sit herself back up again, but was resisting the urge to do it because she knew full well she was supposed to stay laying.

"You wanna come sit up here again, Switch?" Bulk' gestured with his optics toward his knees. And shifted forward a little in his chair, ready to get to his feet at once, and pick the little bot up to hold her on his lap, just the way he'd done more than once before by then. "I doubt Knockout would mind, if you moved back over here." he looked for a second at his teammate. And of course he saw him nod a little in his direction. To his surprise though the youngling, after thinking for a moment or two, just shook her head.

"Thanks Bulk', but I think I'm okay," she said, her voice far more 'grown up' again. And a tiny, if not still clearly doubtful, smile appeared on her face-plate.

She was at some odd age for youngling bots. Perhaps close to halfway through her second frame years. And as she grew stronger and far more functional again, that was becoming far more clear with each day. Sure, it had always been simple enough, much earlier after she'd acquired damages, for the medics to keep her calm and happier by holding her in their arms. And Knockout of course, had been seen more than once rocking with her lightly on his cart, like he might have with a much smaller child. But such things as that only worked so well, and had not openly offended her, because she was so badly damaged. And even when her state was bad enough that that could keep her calm and make her smile just a little, she could still talk in a close to grown up tone, easily able to make herself well understood. And she always had.

"Is this going hurt much more than energon testing?" the youngling bot questioned, her tone a mix of a bot that just wanted to know and be sure, and a small youngling that badly feared the answer. She closed her optics for a second, and her frame cringed visibly, as she appeared to consider the worst.

"It more than likely will," Knockout answered, honestly. "But certainly not for very long if you just hold as still as you can, so I can be quick about this, for you."

"We've done this before," he added in under a second. And he smiled a little, in obvious assurance, while he unwound the end of a thin coiled tube, working the best of could from his seated position on his cart, and reaching over a work table. "You might not remember much though..."

"I don't remember that..." the youngling said. Her voice was shaking now with nervousness. And she stared, wide optic'd, at the equipment in Knockout's hand, when perhaps it would have been easier on her not to.

"This was so soon after you came here." Knockout explained, smiling assurance again. He finished his fussing around with the coiled tube and rolled closer to her again. "You were nearly recharging then."

"I'm sorry for what my creator did to you..." the little bot told the medic suddenly. And when Knockout just looked at her for a second, clearly unsure what exactly she meant, the youngling quickly explained. "I remember, I saw him kick you until you fell down on the street downtown. He didn't need to do that. He doesn't need to be beating on anyone, 'specially not a medic."

"Never be sorry for something your creator did," Knockout answered her quickly. He smiled again, reaching over her small body from his seated position on his cart, and pausing to unfasten his own seat belt, in order to do so, so he could hold her tiny arm with his slightly weaker hand. "It was never your fault he did any of the things he did. And I wasn't hurt, just... mostly shocked and offended."

"He's not nearly that... easily damaged," Bulkhead added, standing up from his too-small chair. He was close beside the tiny bot's recharge station in a couple of long steps and a small fraction of a second. And without another word, he held out his hand to the youngling.

"Th... thanks Bulk,'" Switchgear said, her own tiny hand reaching back at once.

"Relax, little bot," Bulkhead said calmly. And he squeezed her tiny hand just a bit. "This should only take a second or two."

He watched her close her optics then. And he had to admit he certainly did see the sense in that – many bots it seemed did the very same thing in similar circumstances. But his spark dropped hard when he felt her frame stiffen, her hand still held by his, the second Knockout began working.

"You're okay, little bot," he said, unsure what to do entirely in his inexperience with youngling bots, and simply trying his best because it had always worked so far. But to his dismay her tiny frame seemed to stiffen far worse still in what was clearly panic by then. And he felt just how much he wanted to pick her up and hug her.

She moved then slightly, just enough to try to snatch her arm away from the medic – though it was easy to guess she certainly didn't mean to. And Knockout, understanding still clear on his face-plate, just moved a little so that he could gently stop her.

"No one is ever trying to hurt you," he said slowly, still clearly trying to work just as quickly as he could, and having slight trouble in doing so because of the youngling's strange panic. "Remember? I told you that once. And... there we go. All done."

Knockout rolled backwards then, one hand on his hand control, and the other held out, to show the little bot that he had no tools in his hands that could possibly be used to cause her any more pain. And with her optics open now again, she just smiled, a shaky little smile, as she slowly sat herself up on her recharge station.

"Bulk'" she said, her tone both surprising small and shaky as she spoke. "That hurt worse than I thought..."

"I know," Bulkhead answered back, because her rigid stiffness had made that obvious to him already. He was going to add more, to simply assure her the best way he could – despite the feeling he had that he was still no good with that kind of thing at all. But she turned her head then a little, looking up at him again. And just as soon as she did, he could see so clearly that her optics were brimming with coolant tears. He looked at her tear-filled optics, and to his dismay saw them both fill at once with what looked like dread and despair.

Instantly, and of course careful not to bump the energon line now just as well as her near destroyed arm still wrapped tight against her frame, he lifted her up quickly as he could into his arms, holding her just as tightly as he'd wished he could have seconds ago, dismayed when she gave one loud sobbing cry against his armour

"Hey, don't cry, Switch," he said, sitting back down in his chair, and sitting her up at once on his knees.

"I'm sorry," Switchgear cried. Her hand went at once to her optics. And with a look of something close to anger at herself, she wiped hard at the tears with the back of her hand, while still more fell. "I'm sorry, Bulkhead. I'm sorry. I'll try to stop..."

Bulkhead's spark dropped for a moment then in despair of his own, because he realized at once he had no idea what to do, or why the little bot was so sorry to begin with. He pulled her tiny body tighter against his much larger one again, and for a second he just sat like that, thinking, while her body trembled with unwanted cries she clearly couldn't stop.

"Do you really think I won't want you anymore just for crying a few little tears, Switch?" he asked her slowly, once he was sure he'd worked it out himself. And just as soon as he had indeed understood that much, his spark dropped further.

"Scr.. Scrapheap s... said if I... if I cry too much no.. no one will ever love me," the youngling said then, explaining through tears, which she wiped at again and now far too roughly. "Th.. that I'll always just b... be the garbage left to b... be thrown away."

Bulkhead was an Autobot. He believed in second – possibly even third - chances for anyone. He believed that anyone had the potential for goodness in anybot – and he'd seen enough bots make good on that belief in them, to convince him he was right to believe it. Still, in that second, for all of his understanding he knew he could easily hate this bot named Scrapheap. He cringed just a little, with his arms still held protectively around 'his' youngling, while he reflected a brief moment on how lucky he thought that bot was that Soundwave, and not himself, had been the one he'd run into once already.

"I don't like to see you crying, Switch, because it makes me sad to see you so upset," he explained slowly. And he held her just as tightly just to show her for sure that his intent was to do anything but simply throw her away. "But a good cry now and then, that's hardly a crime."

"Please don't think I'm a big stupid cry-baby," Switchgear said in reply, her voice almost begging with the obvious despair of a youngling, who just wanted to be loved.

"Never gotta happen," Bulkhead promised, through his own uncertainty. And when the tiny bot on his lap gave a hint of a smile in response to his words, he smiled right back.

"Thanks Bulk'" the little bot answered back, with her tears quickly drying now in little coolant streaks down her face-plate. Her smile grew brighter, and she kicked her little feet idly as they hung over the much larger bot's knees.

"Arcee told me yesterday we're gonna need a few good house rules," Bulkhead said, smiling with greater confidence now at 'his' youngling. "And the very first rule is going to be... no one is ever a 'big stupid cry baby'"

"I like rule one, Bulk.." the youngling answered. But her head dropped forward a little as she spoke, and though she could lift it easily again and did, she was clearly sleepy then. Bulkhead just chuckled a little, because he had just watched a moment before as Knockout injected medication into her energon line – even though the youngling herself had clearly not noticed.

"I don't... I don't feel well..." Switchgear mumbled, reacting in more than obvious panic at her sudden urgent dropping toward pre-power-down recharge.

"You're fine little bot," Bulkhead answered, shockingly sad at her sudden panic. And without anyone even needing to advise he do so, he shifted her a little in his arms, tilting her back a little so she couldn't fall. And immediately her head dropped to rest against his armour. "You're fine. You just go to recharge if you want to."

"Bumblebee is going to take you to Ratchet, waiting for you in the medbay, in a moment," Knockout told the little one, who trembled just the slightest bit because she certainly couldn't help herself. But still, she nodded understanding, looking up for just a second with mostly dim and closed optics, before her head dropped to rest again.

Bulkhead let go of the tiny frame now slumped against him motionless, when 'Bee took her from him gently. But the reluctance with which he let go of her surprised him. And as he watched his black and yellow teammate hurry from the room with the tiny green youngling in his arms, he could see easily that although she wasn't moving she was certainly still awake – if not barely so. Bulkhead heard her mumble something then, about 'Bee's 'pretty' 'shiny' paint, and about how she was calmer now. And he sat in his almost too small chair, just shaking his head, chuckling, before he looked, suddenly overwhelmed down toward the shiny white floor.

"Welcome to creator-hood my friend," said Knockout. And Bulk' looked up after a long moment, surprised to see him still in the room, just sitting on his cart with understanding on his face-plate. "I want to tell you it might get easier to just let them go eventually, but it just doesn't seem to work that way..."

"I just..." Bulkhead had never been a bot with a great way with with words. And he shrugged half helplessly, trying to decide what to say, while he pushed himself up from the chair. Walking toward the small window, he looked out over the courtyard and shrugged again. "I can't believe how much I really do love that little bot. I'm sure it's not quite like you with your little Cybershock, because I didn't actually make her. Still... Switch' is my kid now. Still sounds weird to say that. But I love her all the same. I wanna give her everything, just to see her happy. I wanna tell her she can be anything she wants to be on this second chance world we've got... stomp the life force out of any bot that tells her otherwise..."

"It doesn't matter that your didn't make her, as you put it, Bulk'" Knockout answered, smiling, clearly lost in thoughts of his own. "You didn't make her spark, didn't give her CNA... but you'll make her future. And seeing you with her this past while... before you even made it known how much you wanted to step in for her... I'm not the least bit convinced that CNA is what really makes a creator."

"I only hope I can keep up with her," Bulk said, chuckling a little, though no less doubtful about exactly that. "I may not be an old bot, but I'm not so young either. Even damaged and down one arm and hand, Switch' can almost tire me out. Primus help me when she's fully recovered..." He gave a small laugh and shook his head, still looking out the window. "And I thought sometimes it was hard just taking care of Miko..."

"You've still got it easy, Bulk,'" Knockout said, suddenly laughing loudly and shaking his head. "My Cybershock loves to ask me to push her on swings. Seriously. How am I possibly..." he gestured with his optics toward the machine he sat in, with his hand still on it's hand control, and for a second he just looked almost amused. In just a second though his face-plate turned serious and he rolled forward a very short distance. "Our younglings though... they only ever ask that we always do our best, that we listen... and that we love them."

"That's all Switch' ever really wanted... ta be loved. I get sad thinkin' about it every time. But the poor little thing just wants somebot who'll love her just for bein' her." In what seemed like oddly perfect timing, a young bot – a refugee likely, judging by his lack of any clear symbols on his painted and just the general look of him – walked slowly across the edge of the courtyard with a youngling of his own in tow. And the two of them chattered on with smiles on their face-plates, until the bot scooped the tiny youngling up into his arms, spinning him around, at least three times until they both appeared dizzy. And Bulkhead stood watching them for a second, chuckling with a smile on his face-plate again.

"You all ready to take that little one home with you soon?" Knockout questioned. "She's on track for discharge within days now... assuming all goes to plan of course."

"I'm ready," said Bulkhead, doubtful and smiling confidence all at once. "Err... at least I think I am. Wheeljack and Smokescreen were over last night. They both laughed at me 'cause my place is full of toys and data pads now..."

"Bulkhead, let me give you some advice – don't ever let anyone tell you you can't do it. That you just aren't good enough because ten bots might well seem like they'd be better than you are at caring for a youngling. Any child is a gift to your new world, and they will always love you more than anyone just for trying your best."

"That sounds like pretty good advice..."

"Ha," Knockout said, nodding. "I can't take all the credit for it though I must admit. That was something Ratchet said to me once, when Cybershock first came along... when I wondered what in the name of Primus I'd gotten myself into. Of course I feared on so many levels that tiny girl was doomed with me as her creator. I quickly learned that he was right though, and yeah it is very good advice."

Knockout smacked Bulkhead then, across the backs of his shoulder panels, making him finally turn away from the window. And despite the fact that he was usually to one to be smacked like that and not the one doing the smacking, he managed to hit just as hard as any other bot, and showed his strength in doing so.

"let's go and get some energon," he said, already rolling toward the door. "If you are anything like any other of the carriers and creators sitting on the ward, and I know you are, you haven't had any today at all, just waiting with your worried youngling."

"You aren't going to work with Ratchet and 'Bee on Switchbla... Switchgear's repairs?" Bulkhead asked because he had assumed that would be the case. But Knockout instead just shook his head.

"Too delicate of work," he said. "I'm not exactly qualified for surgeries anymore."

Bulkhead was about to comment back, as he turned away from the window to face his friend and teammate. But he questioned in his own processor what exactly he should say on a world where bots still looked shocked at hearing any comments about limitations to a 'broken' bot. And all at once, he feared his question, though asked innocently enough without him really thinking, had truly been stupid. Knockout however just laughed a little, and he was smiling calmly by the time Bulkhead had finished slowly turning around.

"It doesn't bother me anymore these days," he said seriously. "I love the work I'm doing now. I would never have guessed once that working with younglings would be my true calling... I once heard that all things that happen, happen for big reasons..."

"Speaking of younglings," Bulkhead said, grinning by now as both bots left the room, and headed out into the main corridor of the ward. "Rumour has it you and Arcee are trying for a second child of your own."

"Those rumours would indeed be true," Knockout answered, grinning right back.

But a loud bleep from his comm-link made him pause at once to listen. And Bulkhead stood a moment just listening, as the medic, still seated on his machine, talked in serious tones with an unknown someone someone on the other end.

"I'm terribly sorry," Knockout said, after he'd cut his comm-link again. He was visibly angry now, and Bulkhead stepped toward him, ready to help in an instant, because he knew at once that something had clearly happened. But Knockout just held up a hand, and calmed himself at once with a firm intake, before he shook his head again.

"Stay here and wait for your little one," he said. "I don't know much yet... that was Soundwave. We've got an emergency. I can only imagine the team will later be briefed..."

* * *

"Firestorm..." Soundwave said, uncertain and shaky to the small bot he carried in his arms, running fast out of the elevator as soon as it reached the forty-second floor. His optics caught a glimpse of the energon smeared over the wall to his left as he turned to run out. And he cringed then with shock and anger, before simply moving faster. "Firestorm... can you hear me?"

She'd been awake, or at least partly so, when he'd left ground level with her, optics just barely open and trying to talk to him a bit – even if it was just inaudible mumbling. But she'd stopped speaking, and let her optics shut completely perhaps halfway back up to their floor.

Leaving the elevator quickly, he was about halfway to the door of his own unit 4214 – clear at the other end of the hall, when a door slid open beside him. Somebot, a refugee with his light blue paint chipped and faded stepped out of the apartment – an adolescent youngling right behind him.

"Please," said Soundwave, urgently and looking down at the bot in his arms. "Help us..."

It was not like him at all to speak to a stranger. And he could not recall a single time in centuries that he'd done so for any reason at all. But he was barely thinking now of his own discomfort in trying, because he did truly need help, and it wasn't about himself anymore.

"Get away from us," the refugee growled. And immediately he glared at Soundwave, with utter disgust and horror in his optics, while he moved to step around him fast.

The youngling though stepped forward, however hesitantly, and for a second his optics looked over Firestorm, still held motionless in Soundwave's arm.

"Stay back," the blue bot, told the youngling – presumably his creation. And he yanked him urgently by an arm, to stand behind him at once. In under a second he was hurrying away down the corridor, the disgusted glare still planted on his face-plate, and the younger bot following slowly, glancing back repeatedly with a look of regret.

"He's nothing but a filthy 'con," the blue refugee muttered, loud enough for Soundwave to hear him, and clearly on purpose. "I don't that little mini-bot is but she can't be anything better than he is."

"That sick fragger beat that femme senseless and new he think he can cover it up by calling for help," Another bot said somewhere close by. And Soundwave, to his dismay, realized only then that another door had opened, revealing another bot, who conserved with the first one.

"If it's gotten this bad, he's done it before," the first bot said. And Soundwave running froward again, stumbling toward his own door, shaking with his horror and rage, saw both of them now pointing at him accusingly. "And she obviously didn't leave him then, before he clearly nearly killed her."

"Lost cause," the second bot muttered, shaking his head, stepping back inside his doorway. "Too bad we still have so few females to lose."

"Please," Soundwave begged, fighting back the tears of rage that formed in his optics. He moved closer to his door and looked back as he did. "I only need someone to wait for the medic... show him to our unit..."

"I should kill you, 'con," the the blue refugee said in reply to his pleading. The youngling stepped forward again, his face-plate a show of understanding. But his creator just yanked him roughly back again, protecting him from some danger he'd imagined only in his mind. "I might just come deal with you later... rip your spark out for hurting her..." He retreated fast then, with the youngling behind him. And Soundwave was once again alone.

"Pardon me..." he said, when the door beside his own slid open as he reached it. "Can... you help us?"

A young bot stepped out. Clearly an adult but still very young. Painted green, and busy talking on his comm-link. Soundwave watched the young bot as he reached up to pause his call, and for a moment the refugee just studied him, in clear uncertainty, before his optics travelled down to Firestorm.

"S...sorry..." the refugee said quickly, stumbling over both his words and his feet, as he crept past and out into the hallway. "I... I.. dunno wh... what happened, but I... I don't wanna get involved..." He was gone before Soundwave could even find the words to protest.

"Soun'... wave..." Firestorm mumbled then, regaining partial consciousness, as Soundwave shoved open his apartment door on its track, hurrying inside, nearly tripping over a half unpacked create inside the doorway. He ran to the recharge room, down the narrow hallway, and layed her carefully down on the recharge station.

"You are... safe now..." he said slowly. "You are... home..."

She lay still just blinking at him with clouded optics, and he blinked back, wondering then exactly what he could and should possibly do for her, now that he'd gotten her that far. Her face-plate was damaged. That much was clear at only a glance. Its right side was cracked badly, and the left was soaked with energon. And it was easy to guess it might just be shattered entirely underneath that horrible oil stained bluish bleeding mess. Her frame was dented horribly. And close to her mid section on one side, armour had been torn away from another horrible crack he knew was caused by a large bot's heavy foot against it.

"I have comm'd Knockout," Soundwave explained, leaving her just long enough to grab a rag from the wash station across the hall and soak it wet before he ran back, stood beside her and just stared down at her, horrified. "He will know what to do..."

Firestorm said nothing. And instead just lay shaking, while Soundwave, unsure what else he could do began gently cleaning her up with the washrag. Her interface panel was closed tightly, and free of scuffs and scratches. Soundwave saw that clearly when he dared to look after a moment. And he sighed with relief, suddenly hopeful that perhaps the bots in the elevator had, once again been caught before they'd managed to violate her. Still, even spared from that, she shook and trembled harder still, clearly in shock from the beating the pair had been able to inflict. And Soundwave forced back his rage then, trying his best to be gentle in his work, while he imagined he may just kill them regardless of how far they had or hadn't gone.

"I should have gone with you when you asked me to," he said. The tears he'd fought back in the hallway fell now, but it didn't matter anymore. He sat down lightly on the edge of their recharge station, crying harder than he knew he had ever before, while he went on gently wiping at her face-plate, horrified at the energon that flowed out to replace what he'd just cleaned, the instant he did so. And Firestorm just lay still as ever shaking badly. And once in a while her optics slowly blinked.

"Soundwave!" Someone shouted somewhere outside the apartment. And through a cloud of his own terror and despair, he vaguely recognized the voice as Knockout's, and he was shouting urgently.

"Door – unlocked," Soundwave called back, his speech reverting to formal shorthand in his panicked state. His attention drifted away from him again though at once. And he was aware that anyone had entered the place at all, only after the medical student Knockout had brought with him, rested a hand on his shoulder panel, clearly because no one had ever told him he shouldn't do so.

Soundwave jumped to awareness again, at he hesitant hand that had lightly grabbed him. And he pulled himself up shakily, from where he'd come to rest for a second, crying hard, leaning over Firestorm's beaten frame. And he just sat back, leaning awkwardly against the recharge station's headboard with his feet resting on the floor, deciding he would never leave her unless he was told to, which he wasn't.

"Firestorm," he watched and heard Knockout say firmly to the injured bot. He quickly powered up the scanner the student – a clearly uncertain, hesitant and shaky young bot himself – handed him from a medkit. "You're alright. I need you to try to stop shaking like that, okay. Nice slow intakes. I'm just going to scan you."

Firestorm visibly pulled in an intake of breath too sharply at first. But the next one was slower, closer to steady and even. Her terrible violent shaking slowly settled to a lighter steady tremble, and she still just kept slowly blinking, silently and still.

"Starsong," Knockout ordered the young student, gesturing to the medkit he'd placed on the end of the recharge station. "I need a bottle of cleaner fluid ready... and a mid range dose of pain medication... the little green bottle in the far left hand compartment... she's partly in system shock, but I know she's still feeling something."

"Head in the game, kid," he half snapped at the student, when a second later he still stood in one place, just staring down with disbelief clear on his face-plate.

"I'm... s... sorry," the medical student stammered in reply. And he hurried to fetch the things asked of him from the bag. "Firestorm was... my shipmate. Windstorm... her brother... was my friend."

"Ple...help'mee," Firestorm mumbled then, the first she'd spoken in long moments. Though it was unclear exactly who she was speaking to at all, or even if that mattered much. Her frame trembled steadily as ever, and her optics began to focus just a little, before she blinked again and her optics clouded. And the small mini-bot, who hadn't moved since Soundwave had put her down on the recharge station, moved just a little then, pulling her arm back weakly as Knockout injected medication into her body.

"He is... trying to help you..." Soundwave said slowly, more than well aware of coolant tears still covering his face-plate, but helpless to stop them anyway.

He watched his teammate spray cleaner fluid onto Firestorm's face-plate, saw her blink her optics harder with obvious pain, saw them both fill up with tears that never fell. But she was still close to motionless, and silent as he worked. Soundwave reached out then, gently holding her hands in his, determined to give her comfort although she hadn't asked him to. And he felt relief fill his spark when her right hand squeezed his just a little, though it still trembled steadily right along with the rest of her body. He lifted her hands a little, shifting her body just slightly, to help his teammate just as much as he could, while he worked carefully, pressing his hands lightly against both sides of Firestorm's frame, obviously looking for any hidden damages beneath the pale yellow body armour.

Soundwave cringed horribly when he heard something audibly crunch a little under firestorm left body panel, despite just how lightly Knockout had touched the armour there. And in the corner of his vision, he saw the young student, Starsong, cringe too. Firestorm just stayed still as ever silent in her state of shock. There were a few more tears then though, forming in her blue optics. And these slid down her face-plate, mixing at once with the energon and oil that had never stopped flowing.

He wanted to run then, just about as much as he'd first decided he would stay unless forced not to. His processor screamed at him to slip down from the recharge station quickly, and hurry to the living room, where he could pace across the floor, perhaps tune out her impending cries any way he could, and ask her to forgive him long after the fact.

But he remembered how he'd turned and run from her on the day it looked like the cybermatter trial was going to fail. His processor was instantly filled again with the sound of her nearly forgotten terrified cries, screamed mindlessly over the sound of monitor alarms. And he recalled the look on her face-plate when he'd spoken to her later – the near crushed disappointed look he knew she tried to hide, while she told him at least three times that she understood. Soundwave shoved the memory away, only for it to be replaced at once by a new memory instead. And this time he recalled standing in the medbay, Firestorm injured shocked and frantic – the aftermath of a downtown explosion that should never have happened - begging him wordlessly with her optics not to leave her. He hadn't left her then... hadn't turned and run not matter that he;d wanted to. And for a second, he assured himself now in his own mind that that made everything okay. But his own self assurance was met then with a memory of how he'd only stood, silent and frozen, where his only instruction had been 'keep talking.'

He couldn't leave her now. He couldn't fail and he wouldn't. So instead, with a slow intake and some great determination to trust himself, he just leaned forward again his full attention on her and his optics never leaving hers. And he tried hard to hold her attention just as well as he could, while he medic turned his attention again back to her busted face-plate, which was bleeding energon just as much as ever and perhaps even worse.

"I think we can all be thankful, Ultra Magnus was waiting for the elevator when he was," Knockout muttered as he worked. And Soundwave could not miss the satisfaction in his voice. "Those two fools that did this obviously had no idea the head of the police force lives in this building as well. He told me when I got here, he'd only thought the fragging elevator was on the fritz, until he heard some poor bot screaming for life inside it somewhere up the cables..." he shook his head for just a second while he worked. "That pair is going away to lock up for a very long time..."

Knockout was angry. Soundwave could hear it in his voice, right along with that clear want for justice. And Soundwave was not exactly surprised at this anger from him – enough near rage, it seemed, to nearly match his own. Knockout cared for Firestorm just like the baby sister he'd never got to have. He'd never been a truly violent sort of bot. Even among Decepticons and fully functional, he'd been more ridiculously mouthy and empty threats than anything else – though he'd never been above knocking many an unsuspecting trooper to the floor with a heavy swipe of his energon rod, because he was frustrated and they were simply in his way. But Soundwave knew this was different. And had his fellow defector still been fully functional, there was little doubt left that he'd kill both of those offending bots if only Soundwave somehow missed their sparks.

"A very long time," Soundwave said, repeating the words of his teammate slowly while his optics stayed on Firestorm's. "Firestorm... you are safe from them now..."

She looked at him, still almost blankly. And her optics blinked again with the same pain and shock and terror. But she focused just a little more, her head turning just the tiniest bit, making it clear she really was listening, understanding. Something flashed across her optics than that might have been relief at the mention of safety. And she sighed a little, intaking again while her frame just went on trembling. After just a moment of that though, her optics filled again with tears. And she looked up at Soundwave, terrified.

"Wh... why'does eva-un wanna... hur'mee?" she asked helplessly, speaking a full coherent sentence for the first time, and having such obvious trouble with speaking at all because of the damage to her face-plate. "Wha'did I'do?"

Soundwave watched her then, silent and trying hard to find words when he ad no idea what he even wished to say. Firestorm, he understood sadly, had suffered so much since landing on their world. Most bots to arrive had built their lives, had quickly become so happy even among the rubble of war. And she had built her own life too right along with them. And she was happier than most by her very nature. Still – she'd lost her brother who had raised her, been injured badly in that small explosion, faced judgment and misunderstanding for her damaged processor, and been assaulted by the same bots twice – and all this in a handful of years. Soundwave just shook his head a little, fighting back new tears of his own, angry at the great unfairness of it all.

"Not everyone wants to hurt you, Firestorm," he said, determined to speak to her when it was so clear in her pleading optics that she wanted him to talk to her, and refusing with greater passion now, to fail her where he knew he had before. "I don't want to hurt you. You know I would never... Knockout certainly doesn't..."

"I think we had best power her down," Knockout said, speaking mostly to his student it seemed by the direction in which he was looking. But Firestorm of course heard him too. And she tried to shake her head a little, clearly liking the idea of forced power down no more than most bots ever did.

"I need to do a little work on your face-plate before we even get moving," Knockout said quickly, talking directly to her this time, because she was clearly listening to him. "Main line on the left side is hanging by carbon fibres. It can be properly repaired when we get you to the hospital. But right now I can't leave it just bleeding like this."

"I... I dun'need to go to da hospital," Firestorm mumbled, far more shaky again, quiet and staring off at nothing.

"You definitely do," Knockout answered, firmly. "Your face-plate is cracked broken. It'll take some real work to fix it for you. Your fuel tank is cracked. I want to run a spark scan. And you need nanites and probably an energon transfusion."

Firestorm was silent again. And still. Just laying where she was, on the recharge station, pain and shock and terror clear as ever on her smashed face-plate. And she blinked her optics slowly, giving up and giving in as she was powered down.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes/ I am re-posting this after I took it down yesterday. I had realized only after posting the original, that I'd grabbed the wrong file by mistake... one with an entire scene missing (close the end if anyone is confused and wants to reread for that missed bit) and a couple of changes here and there. Terribly sorry for the mix up...**

 **This chapter is a little different in a way. Dialogue heavy (even for me,) and centred almost entirely on the story lines of Soundwave and Firestorm.**

 **Stay posted, readers. I have some interesting... hmm... plot twists in mind that that will come up soon...**

Soundwave set an empty container under the energon dispenser, pausing a moment, before he pulled open a drawer, looking over small tins filled with flavor powers. Cobalt, he decided quickly, reaching for the flavor, and shaking some power into the container. Exactly how Firestorm seemed to like her morning fuel most days lately. He pushed the 'dispense fuel' button, and grabbed the container again when it was full. He moved then to fill a second container – this one for himself. And with a slight silent laugh, he pulled open the drawer again, choosing a flavor for his own fuel too. Quickly he picked up both containers then, one in each of his hands, and crept quietly into the small living room of the tiny apartment.

"Firestorm," he called out slowly, hesitant in his calling, when he found the mini-bot sitting by the window, knees pulled up in front of her in a chair, staring out at what looked like not much at all, from the forty-second floor.

"Some fuel for you," he said simply, sure he sounded ridiculous to state that obvious fact while he held out the container in his hand. And he knew well she might just have usually laughed at him good naturedly for it. But that morning she barely blinked and didn't turn away from the window to even look his way.

"Drink some energon," Soundwave urged her. And he forced his voice into a tone that could not possibly have sounded forceful or pushy, while he offered the container.

To his relief, she took it slowly, and took an even slower sip from it. But after one small drink she just lowered the container again, her attention back on he window, and her fuel barely touched. She had barely had a drink of energon for days already, and that morning, it was clear she was somehow still not hungry for anything at all.

"Perhaps... you should talk to Ratchet," Soundwave suggested. His hesitation was clear in his voice, and he knew it. But he pressed on anyway, stepping closer to her, before sitting in the other padded chair close to window and looking outside along with her. He took a sip from his own container, hoping she may drink from hers. She did take another sip, but again that was it.

"He was nothing but helpful to me when I first came to the Autobot base," Soundwave said, trying just as hard as ever to find his words before he spoke then entirely out of order. "He's done so much for so many bots... And he has always said his office door and commlink are always open..."

"Knockout and Arcee then..." Soundwave tried, when Firestorm just shook her head, saying nothing. "Or one of them or the other... both of them have always been good for talking with as well... I will comm them if you would like... invite them to visit today..."

Again, Firestorm just shook her head, her attention barely straying from the window.

"Firestorm..." Soundwave said, trying his best without any real idea what to say next.

But she turned around then, to look at him with optics clearly tired from lack or any good rest in days. She held the fuel container absently, and just shook her head at him slowly for a moment.

"I... I don't want to talk to them..." she said quietly. And Soundwave leaned back slightly in his chair, relieved, at least a little, because at least she had finally spoken when she'd been so quiet for too long already.

"So... talk to me," he pleaded with her then.

She just stared at him for a long moment, optics blinking a little, dimming and brightening, only to dim again, before she reached out to set the fuel container she held, down on a table nearby.

"It is... strange to be the one who now speaks far more than you do," Soundwave said then, trying for some mild humour, only hoping for the best. He reached out, slowly taking her hand in his, relieved when she didn't move to pull it back from him again. He spoke up again in another moment. But this time he was entirely serious again.

"You've barely said a word since you've left the hospital. You've hardly had a sip of fuel. Firestorm... please... it's been three days already. Your systems are going to crash without real fuel soon."

He watched her turn away away, her attention right back on the window, and at all of nothing going on outside it. And his spark sunk in fear that she would full shut him out again – she had done that so much in the past four days he'd just spoken of. But then she turned again, to look back at him instead. Her optics blinked slowly once again, and she just stared at him just as if she'd really just seen him at last. For the first time, since the day he'd found her on the elevator floor, coolant tears quickly filled her optics. And she looked at him, hopelessly and blinking.

"I'm... broken, Soundwave," she said. And her voice shook hard with her spark wrenching cries. When Soundwave stood up, stepping forward at once to kneel in front of her still sitting in her chair, she threw herself into his arms, crying horribly against his shoulder panel, her body shaking hard. "I'm not safe on Cybertron... my... my own home. I'm worthless... I'm broken. I should be... be... seen as... as m... more then someone's pleasure bot. I'm dirty and disgusting... or at least I feel like I am... and no... no matter how hard I try to feel better I... I wish I could crawl out of my armour..."

"You are not worthless," Soundwave said firmly. "You are not dirty or disgusting. You are beautiful and smart..." he hugged her tight against his front panelling silent for a moment before he added, all to serious, "And you will always be safe on Cybertron. Because if any bot ever lays a single hand on you again against your will, I will painfully extinguish him."

"I... I can't stop thinking of those two bots that beat me up," Firestorm said. And her voice showed just slightly more confidence as she spoke a little more about the matter. Slowly she moved again, so that her head was away from Soundwave's armour, and she could look up at him, after he'd sat bock down in his own chair. "Every time I think about it, I still feel the pain and... absolute terror and helplessness. At night I try to recharge and instead I just wonder and wonder what I did wrong... what I did to make them hate me enough to do such a thing. I... don't even know them..."

"Firestorm, drink your fuel," Soundwave answered when she'd fallen silent again. His tone was firm and he knew he sounded almost too harsh for the circumstances. But he knew her well, or at least he hoped he truly did. And he trusted himself then, because he felt somehow like he was right in the hunch he was following.

He handed her the still nearly full container, watching her glare at him a second just as he'd expected. But slowly she took it from him, and just as slowly she sipped from it. And once she'd had another small sip, now lighter of spark since she'd spoken a little of her feelings, she drank nearly all of it quickly. Clearly she'd realized at last that she was truly hungry and in true need of the fuel she'd denied herself for days.

"I've always been helpless," she said, speaking again once she was done fuelling. "Windstorm... he always ran to my rescue whenever I needed rescuing from anyone. Just like you, he might have killed for me if things had gotten bad enough with any one bot or two. But my brother is gone now. And you aren't always with me. And you shouldn't be. I should be out on my own sometimes... I want to be, just like anybot does. But..."

"But, this can be a dangerous city, and you don't feel like you can possibly protect yourself alone..." Soundwave guessed at once, finishing her statement for her when she gave up on trying to find the words to. He watched as she just nodded her head, relief at being understood clear in her optics as she cried more tears.

"I'm a mini-bot," she explained, speaking again with at least come obvious confidence in herself now. And her look showed easily that she trusted him to understand and listen to her. "And... and I like being small. Well mostly I do... but I'm weaker than others. And I never learned to do a thing for my own safety but yell for someone who would came and save me, because I was too damaged once to do much else..."

"Firestorm, come with me," Soundwave said in answer to that. He stood up again from his chair and this time he crossed the room, pausing to call for Laserbeak, who flew from the recharge room at once – presumably from a perch she had been resting on in there – to dock herself with him without a protest. He crossed the room quickly, pausing in front of the creaky sliding door that lead out onto a small and still empty patio. He shoved the door open on its track, with a simple mental note to himself to make a try at fixing the stiff sliding roller on the bottom side later on. And quickly, he stepped outside.

Firestorm followed slowly, her steps so clearly hesitant and doubtful as she crossed the living room. But he just held the door open for her, smiling as she slowly joined him in leaning lightly against the railing that surrounded the little balcony. And he saw her smile just a little, the first hint of one he'd seen from her in days, at the fresh air and the true sense of the great heights she strangely loved so much for a grounder.

Soundwave moved quickly then, resting with his back to the rail for a second, before he reached out with his long cables. Wrapping them around Firestorm's small body gently, he pulled her against him, while she cried out in surprise. With another fast and sudden motion, he let himself fall backward over the rail, transforming as he did to his aircraft mode in a move likely more fitting of Starscream than it ever was for him, fired his engine and peeled away from the building fast. For the first time in too many long days, he heard Firestorm laugh then, while she squealed with happy surprise.

She held tightly to his cables that were wrapped around the middle of her body for a moment, likely from the sheer shock of flying when she hadn't expected to be in the least. But in just a tiny moment more she'd let go again, trusting him just as much as ever, to fly while he carried her with him. Instantly she was holding her arms out beside her again, much like a small youngling bot might do, so clearly imagining what it might have been like to fly on her own. And Soundwave, well aware of the smile on her face-plate from inside his own awareness folding into his alt mode, wondered with dismay why he hadn't simply thought to take her flying with him days before then.

"Where are we going?" she asked him, laughing. And Soundwave noted the happy calm in her tone as she spoke. He understood at once that she felt safe then. Truly safe since she was needlessly attacked and beaten. And remembering then that both attackers had clearly been grounders, he understood then with a start that she felt safe now in the air, where they could truly never reach her.

"To the base," he told her, smiling somewhere inside his alt mode, because his hunch still drove him to trust it.

But he flew in a direction leading exactly away from said base instead, turning hard to the east instead of the west, his mind made up to take the long way around and over the city, just to hear her laughter for a few more long moments if he could.

"The base?" Firestorm questioned, still calm and clear happy as ever while she was carried in the air. But her voice was curious too and confused. "What do we wanna go there for?"

"To use the training gym," Soundwave replied, explaining quickly as he banked hard to the left. He thought of rolling then, flipping over in the air, because his strange ever surprising grounder might actually laugh at such a move – even if he was considerably less adept at such aerial manoeuvres compared to many flying bots. But he feared that despite his hold on her, his trust in his own strong cables and her proven skill at holding on just as well as needed, she could still somehow fall. And so he decided against any such moves, continuing on instead straight and upright as he moved toward the base.

"I want to teach you to protect yourself," he said, as he dropped toward the familiar open courtyard, letting her gently touch ground before he transformed, dropping to his feet. She looked at him at once, with doubt clear on her face-plate. And he added, admittedly just slightly uncertain himself, "At least... I think I can teach you."

He knew he was strong. He knew he was fast. He knew that when it came to hand to hand fighting, either for survival or simply practice, his processor could easily work fast enough to plan at least five moves ahead and consider outcomes besides. But he had never tried to teach another bot before. He himself had learned only as a matter of survival. And he'd proven strangely good at it, it seemed only by chance. He'd never imagined he'd ever want to teach anything even remotely to do with the brutally of brawling to any bot all, and least of all to one like Firestorm. But he'd come to quickly understand now that such skills had their uses. And she needed to be to safe, and feel like she was.

"You think I can really learn...?" she questioned slowly, the second the pair began walking quickly toward the main doors that lead inside the Autobot base. She looked interested and hopeful, while at the very same moment doubtful and concerned.

"I have little doubt of it," Soundwave answered.

########

"In this sort of situation, you will easily find yourself backed against a wall," Soundwave explained.

He choose his words almost too carefully, trying hard just to think of speaking while he reviewed and analyzed motions that had become almost instinctive – motions he never seemed to think of at all anymore because of that.

Firestorm - her hands up in front of her face-plate, and her elbows bent in a blocking pose – took uncertain hurried steps backwards, moving fast toward the gym wall behind her, while Soundwave stepped forward right after her, proving his point.

"This is... this is where I might just yell for help," the mini-bot answered. She sounded helpless, as she lowered her hands.

"And what will you possibly do if no one is around to hear you, Firestorm?" Soundwave questioned. He smiled at her for a second in assurance, but his tone was serious. "Keep your hands up. Protect your head and face-plate, remember, until you move them to make a move."

"Right..." the small bot answered back. And she resumed her blocking again, while she appeared to consider. She frowned though in doubt when Soundwave reached out quickly, grabbing her arm gently. Her frustration then was obvious, and for a second she just glared at him, before looking down to the floor.

"How will you get out of this one?" Soundwave questioned, pushing to think a little. "Remember what I told you when we started..."

"Your optics?" she answered, though her answer was almost just as much a question. "If you were an attacker, they might just be a painful target..."

Soundwave just nodded at her as she went slowly though the motion of aiming toward his upper face-plate, with outstretched fingers and a steady, deliberate hand. And when he was pleased just enough with that, he gently grabbed her until then free arm too.

"Do not let me back you against the wall," he said, shoving her back gently to do exactly that. "You are vulnerable against walls and backed into corners."

He nodded, pleased when she slowly made a motion, after considering for just second, of planting her knee right into his interface panel, before stomping gently on his foot.

He walked toward the punching bags, hanging from from the ceiling high above in the centre of the room, relieved when she easily followed, pleased to see her hesitant and doubtful look fading, even if only a little. Without a word he slammed a fist into the bag just as hard as he could, before giving it three fast forward kicks and spinning quickly to give it another, followed closely by another good hit and then another. Slowly he backed up, and then quickly he ran toward it again, his feet leaving the ground for a second as one met the bag somewhere much closer to the top of it than in its middle, and as it swing back hard from the kick he'd given it, he hit it twice hard, once with each hand all before it swung away again.

"You... can't possibly expect me to do that..." Firestorm exclaimed, after she'd watched him for a moment, impressed as ever although she'd watched him do such things many times before. And the doubt."

"That would certainly take some practice and dedication," Soundwave said, allowing himself to laugh a little, while he smiled at her. "Though it's far from impossible." He paused then, smiling again, listening as she laughed a little, and glad as ever just to hear her do so.

"The ability to kick fast and hit as as hard as you can, are both things you will be glad for though, if the need to use such skills ever arises," Soundwave motioned to the punching bag. Encouraging her silently see just what she could do.

Firestorm just stood a moment, her body turning toward the punching bag, and doubt and dread rising up from her spark. She knew her own brother would have told her to leave such a thing alone if she had ever gotten close to one while he had cared for her. And she knew well her shipmates might just have laughed, had they realized she had given even a thought to hitting anything for sport or otherwise. The world was dangerous and violent, they all would have said, their worry and terror for her obvious on their panicked face-plates. And they would only have told her, pointedly and well meaning, to perhaps practice making noise so that one day if she ever needed, she could yell just loud enough to scream for their help. But that was all just weakness, on a world known for violence and brutality. And weakness and her own helplessness had made her a target more than once already.

Firestorm stood just a moment more, staring ahead and seeing almost nothing at all, through a strange fast mounting rage that was rising through her body what what seemed to her like nowhere at all. And she realized in that very second just how much she hated her own weak helplessness, on a world only still growing used to letting the broken and the damaged survive at all.

"To the pit with all of you!" she yelled to an endless number of bots who would and could never hear her say it. Her hand, formed into a good fist before she knew she'd even done it, struck the punching bag in front of her just as hard as she could hit it. And instantly, in rage fuelled by Primus still only knew what exactly, she hit it again twice more.

"I'm not helpless! I'm not weak and stupid and insignificant. I'm not some tragedy... some poor broken youngling who's better off dead!" She hit the bag again countless times before she finally moved to kick the thing and just barely succeeded, stumbling backwards horribly, close to falling back onto the landing mats beneath her. But that near slip only served to make her even angrier, as she imagined the countless bots who might just have either chuckled with laughter at her awkwardness, or warned her then to stop just as though one small fall could have truly broken her for good. Through her frustration she found her focus. And kicking forward again, her foot connected well with the bag this time, causing a perfect and resounding little 'thud' to echo through the nearly empty gym.

"I am not your pleasure bot!" she screamed then, her anger now finding its focus on the pair she'd met in the the sweet shop and again in the elevator. "I'm good for more than that. Anybot is. And Soundwave is not merciless, you ignorant slaggers. You don't understand! No one understands much of anything!"

"The bots you loved," Soundwave said slowly, musing out loud as he walked closer to her, watching as she quickly became too tired to keep on going and simply stopped moving again. "Those bots that loved you... They were well meaning in their words and their actions. I understand that entirely. But to convince you to settle for weakness in yourself... to teach you to rely on them instead of on you... Firestorm, that was a great disservice."

"I..." Firestorm turned around. And for a moment she just stared up at Soundwave unsure what she could say in reply to that. She remembered how she'd talked back to Ratchet, still recently. How she'd walked into his office, frustrated and offended enough to not even bother with waiting to be invited back inside. That was so unlike her. And she understood now, just how close she'd been for a while already, to breaking.

"I... think you're right," she said, feeling her relief and managing a hint of a smile, when Soundwave instantly pulled her against him.

The gym doors slid open before either one of them could say anything more. And the pair let go of each other slowly, as Bulkhead crossed the training gym with Switchgear right behind him. Her small feet ran, short legs trying their hardest just to keep up with his long fast steps across the mats.

"Bad timing?" the big green bot questioned, kind of joking but serious too, just judging by the tone of his voice. His optics watched the pair for a second more though. And a look of concern appeared on his face-plate.

"It is... fine," Soundwave said calmly. And Firestorm just nodded her head smiling again.

"Hello," Switchgear said, politely greeting both of them, because she was nothing if not friendly and polite.

"Hi, Switch," Firestorm answered her, grinning as she did. And this time it was Soundwave's turn to simply nod his own agreement.

"Down for a training match?" Bulkhead asked in Soundwave's direction.

And Soundwave, his focus on Firestorm then, and on teaching her just as much as he could for her to feel safe again, was about to shake his head and wave away the invitation. But then he paused, and thought for a second, wondering if perhaps she could learn something truly useful by watching too skilled bots in their own training. So instead he nodded slightly, and with gesture of assent, he stepped toward Bulk' with fast and deliberate steps.

Sitting down moments later on the floor close to the wall, at the edge of the training mats with the youngling close beside her, Firestorm heard the child laugh loudly.

"I love Bulk' to bits," the youngling said, still laughing, watching the two much larger and well trained bots both trying their best to put the other onto the floor. "But... my bet's on Soundwave."

Both bots who sat observing, cringed just a little, frowning as Soundwave sure enough managed six hard and rapid fire hits in a row before dropping Bulkhead to the mats, by tripping him up with an outstretched foot.

"You look..." Firestorm began to say to the little bot beside her. But looking at her carefully, her optics on the child's now completed and reattached right arm, she wasn't sure at all how to finish what it was she'd started to say. She feared that even a child could certainly be offended if something said, was said wrongly enough. And Switchgear was clearly just a bit older then everyone had guessed when she first came to the attention of everyone on base... more then just a little old enough to know well how to take offence.

"Better?" Switchgear guessed easily, laughing a little as she held out her new arm. And she turned a little to her left, while still seated on the floor, obviously showing off a little of her panelling too. "A completed Cybertronian, and fully functional?"

"All of that, yes," Firestorm answered back, laughing with her now

"So, how are... things?" she asked, still hesitantly, after they'd sat silently for a moment or two just observing the training match that Soundwave was still so obviously winning.

She had been so busy, she understood then, just being scared of the world when it came to herself She'd come to fear danger and the pain that would undoubtedly cause her. And she'd come, however strange the idea seemed to her of any bot, to almost fear challenge. But this small child beside her, she remembered at once and to her sudden dismay, had faced down just as much as she had. And somehow she still smiled. Firestorm, just watching for a moment as the youngling, still smiling brightly, cheered on Bulkhead to get himself up from the floor. And in that second she decided she felt bad for feeling sorry for herself.

"Define 'things'...," Switchgear said, her tone joking. But that was still enough to make it clear that it was only the hesitation around her and the subject of situation that made her uneasy.

"Does that new arm feel okay?" Firestorm asked then, admittedly curious, because she had never faced a need for parts replacement.

"Fine," Switch told her, calmly. And clearly she was perfectly okay with answering, where the world would generally have avoided making her try. She flexed and unflexed her right hand fingers, before bending and unbending the elbow and turning her wrist a little. "The first day was... painful I guess. And Ratchet and Knockout are both so tough with rehab work. But I'm good now." She giggled again, a tiny youngling giggle, before she grinned, explaining. "Knockout made me a deal on day two... he'd try walking the whole corridor from one end of the ward to the other with that walking frame he's got if I could pick up fifteen small bolts with my new hand and drop them into a bin. I did my bit easily, but him... not quite. Ratchet said that's where it pays to be as young as me. I can relearn fast!"

"I'm home now," she added, a good moment and one more hard fall from Bulkhead later. "In my new home I mean... with Bulk'."

"You look... happy," Firestorm said, deciding it was okay to keep on talking, because of course the youngling was, and she was smiling as she did.

"Yep," Switchgear said. And she bounced a little in her place on the lightly padded floor, just off the edge of the training mats. "Bulkhead... he took me with him yesterday to his new construction site. He taught he how use a wrench, and he let me screw in light switch covers. He's been helping me learn to read code because I'm just not as good at it as I know I should be by now. We've been to the playground and he swung on the swings with me too! Yesterday... I started school."

"Switch, that's wonderful," answered Firestorm in reply at once. And she smiled brighter then, letting her usual grin spread over her face-plate, at the very idea that this child might well have a great life after all, despite the unfortunate start she'd clearly gotten.

But then - she thought intently and still smiling – wasn't that what New Cybertron was for? Chances for those born without them. Hope for the once hopeless. And a world where no one would be left behind again... That was, it seemed to her, certainly what the new council dreamed of for their world.

"I'm registered now," Switch said, still excited as ever, still bouncing a little on the floor. "I officially exist! And my name is formally Switchgear on the record!"

Firestorm just smiled at her, cheering with her as Bulkhead got up yet again from the mats, and this time succeeded in knocking Soundwave to the floor with a fast shove against his front panelling with both of his hands.

"Switchgear, may I ask you a question?" Firestorm asked, somewhat cautiously, after she'd thought about it for a moment.

"Sure ya can," the youngling said, without any hesitation at all. And she looked then in Firestorm's direction, obviously curious as to what might have been so important as to make her suddenly so careful in her words.

"What happened on that night of that explosion in Scrapheap's shop?" Firestorm understood at once that she had taken a risk by asking her that.

The Autobots and of course the police-bots, all wanted to know for obvious reasons. And she'd overheard the Autobot team more than once all making their best guesses surrounding the circumstances of that accident. But no one it seemed, had ever really thought to take a chance on simply asking Switch – a youngling who was clearly old enough to give them a detailed and useful answer. No one wanted to upset her. Firestorm understood that of course. She of course didn't want to either. But she had been a damaged youngling herself. And she was sure from her own experience that it wasn't always half as terrifying, at least after the fact, as many feared when one was so little.

"Scrapheap was passed out on the sofa," the youngling bot started to explain. She appeared to think for a moment, recalling the details in order. And of course she did look at least a little bit upset as she considered. Still she was far from panicked, and clearly willing to explain, or at least to try to. "He'd been drinking all day, and yelling and screaming... throwing stuff at me. When he finally just passed out drunk I was happy, because at least then he'd leave me along for a while. But then I got bored because I was all alone. I decided ta try cleaning the house 'cause he was yelling earlier over the commlink about some mess his friends had made downstairs"

"He keeps his chemical stuff down there," the youngling continued on, confirming an already well discovered fact. And right away she went on explaining more. "I dunno what he does with it all. I asked him to teach me once and he threw an energon container at me... but I know he said to never touch anything. So I didn't. I just cleaned up the desk and the work table. I didn't know there was a burner turned on. I guess someone forgot to turn it off. I didn't know how hot that was, or that the cleaning rag would catch on fire when I wiped it down. But the rag was burning then, so I threw the rag onto the floor. I didn't know something spilled all over the place was going to explode when I threw that burning rag..."

Bulkhead and Soundwave had stopped their training match somewhere into the youngling's recounting of events. And both stood, listening carefully and both clearly saddened by it all. Bulkhead stepped closer, his expression so obviously concerned. And Firestorm was just about to tell the youngling they had all heard everything anyone could possibly need to know. But the little bot just spoke up again, speaking when it looked like she may not want to say anything more.

"I know I should have rolled on the floor," she said slowly. "I think I did at first. But then I guess I musta panicked 'cause I ended up outside. And I guess I just kept running for a while toward those housing buildings. I musta fallen down, 'cause I remember I just couldn't keep going. But I don't remember all that very well."

"I didn't know you remembered so much about all that, Switch," said Bulkhead. And he kneeled down on the floor in front of her at once, lifting her carefully into his lap, with sadness in his optics.

"You never asked me, Bulk," the youngling answered, instantly confirming Firestorm's guess easily And the look in her little bright blue optics, and the little smile on her face-plate, made it clear that she was still okay. "I would have explained it all, just as much as I could have... but no one ever asked me to before."

########

"Soundwave?" Firestorm asked, hesitant again as the pair strolled at a slow pace down the walkway, alongside the city's 'main street.'

"Yes?" Soundwave replied. They stopped together on a corner, watching as a large group of bots roared by on the road in their vehicle modes, a few of them revving engines and spinning up metal dust with their tires clearly on purpose. Firestorm glared a second, shaking her head hard, as fine aluminum fibres hit them both in a deliberate spray, courtesy of some white and green bot behind the pack. But Soundwave just ignored him, better, as always at simply ignoring such ridiculous and inconsiderate behaviour.

"Am I really doing the right thing?" Firestorm questioned, crossing the road when the flow of traffic stopped. "Wanting to become a flyer?"

Their walk across the street had brought them to the front of a still empty shop front – the one that would be hers just as soon as the registration on the place went through in perhaps only days. The small shop, purpose built containing paint spraying booths, and shelving and space for storage and a design table in the middle of the place, had large reflective window in the front. And Firestorm paused in front of the first window, staring for a moment at her own reflection in it.

She studied her own frame. And though she saw it every morning while washing up, she took the time for the first time in her life to really notice what she looked like. She could see the small pair of her rear wheels halfway hidden behind the knees of her bot mode when she turned to look for them. And somewhere closer to the top of her body, tucked between her shoulder panels, was a hint of her single front tire. Right across the front of her chest panel, she carried her radiator grill, and each of her lower arm's panels was clearly a car door, each lower leg was a shiny yellow rear fender. And tail fins fell behind each of her feet.

She would look so different carrying plane parts in the place of those of any ground based vehicle. And looking at herself, reflected in the window, she realized that when it somehow had never fully occurred to her to consider that before. She would have wings behind her upper frame. And somewhere there would be landing gear, and thrusters and spinning engine turbines. And if only she'd had any living family left, she knew she'd look so little like any of them then.

"I can't tell you that," Soundwave said. He stopped beside her. And though his face-plate was once again hidden entirely, it was so easy to imagine he probably smiled then for the few short moments he could manage to do so. "I can't tell you what's truly right or wrong for you, and I will never try to tell you. I think..." he paused then, obviously considering exactly what he was trying to say, before he finally spoke again. I think you need more trust in yourself to know who you are and what you want to be."

"I'll really be a flying bot very soon," Firestorm replied, trying hard to let herself truly trust, just as Soundwave always said she should. And as she spoke to him, her gaze moved involuntarily toward the sky, while her hands reached out for his. A smile spread across her face-plate. "That's who I really am... exactly what I know I always should have been."

"Fast flying bot, and... paint shop owner," Soundwave said back. The pride was all too clear in his voice as he gestured toward the shop they stood in front of, laughing just a little with his obvious happiness.

"I knew you'd do it one day," he added quickly, his hand still pointing to the store front while his other one held tightly to hers. "Shinning paint and bold designs will be the latest thing in this new city."

"I only hope bots trust the spraying machines," Firestorm said, slightly worried when she really thought about it. Speedbreaker had built each machine in the paint and graphics stations, and so they were of course a brand new design for a brand new idea. And Speedy was a still unknown engineer.

"The only way you will ever know for sure is to try,"

"Soundwave?"

"Firestorm..."

The pair laughed together for a second at the silliness of that ongoing little pointless game of theirs, before Firestorm smiled brighter, her optics looking for his somewhere behind his face-shield.

"Thank you for being the first bot to really say I could be someone on my own," she said.

"And I said not a thing that was not true," Soundwave said right back. And Firestorm knew at once he had to have been smiling again. But he fell silent again so sudden it seemed strange, even for him. And for a moment he stood strangely still, on the walkway.

"Soundwave?" Firestorm questioned, concerned. And she watched a second, as he appeared to snap himself quickly out of whatever intent thoughts he'd been absorbed in.

"Perhaps... we should move," he said. "The housing commission would surely see the reasoning behind us requesting a reassignment to a new apartment, after..."

He didn't finish speaking his thought out loud. But Firestorm understood at once. Of course he'd think of moving, consider that her attackers – or one of them at least – was clearly their neighbour. She thought of it a lot herself, in the past days spent sitting by the window. She'd been sure she'd ask him to let them reapply. But now, to her own surprise she just shook her head instead.

"Those bots are in jail now," she said, determined, serious. "It's... like you said. They are going to be locked away for a very long time. Soundwave, we can't let them win... we can't give up our home because they exist on the same world we do."

"Are you... certain?" Soundwave's concern was obvious as ever. But Firestorm just stared at him before she shook her head again, firmly.

"It's our home," she said, considering a second. "What will we do? Run every time someone tries to knock us down? We'd be running forever..."

She watched Soundwave nod a little, clearly understanding exact what she meant to say. And she just smiled back, swinging their hands between them a little.

"Hey, Soundwave?" she asked slowly.

"Yes?"

"Can we fly again? Can we go somewhere out of the city and just sit talking for a while?"

"Of course we can do that," Soundwave said. And he had picked her up gently in his cables, before he'd even finished speaking.

########

"You are... quiet again," Soundwave said. He looked down at Firestorm who half way to lay on the ground in front of him, her head resting on his knees. "You are, alright?"

He'd landed with her on the far off bank of the Boiling River, on a part of the land just high enough that the heat from the river warmed their metal nicely without ever being dangerous. The ground shown violet here, streaked lightly with thin bands or red wherever small lines of rusted iron ran across huge stones of amethyst. Far up the bank there were the ruins of some long abandoned outpost, once controlled by Decepticon forces. And there was a bridge, which once ran the full width of the river and high above it. But that was crumbled now, leaving only the wreckage of the support towers reaching high up into the air on either side of the streaming, rolling watery oil, with a few broken cables swinging around a little in the blowing breeze.

"I'm alright," Firestorm answered back slowly. But still she spoke with confidence, and sat up straight to look around her again.

"This place doesn't make you nervous, does it?" Soundwave asked, suddenly concerned, as he looked around himself, guessing for the first time at just how such wreckage it may have looked to a young refugee. But Firestorm just shook her head, and even smiled just a little.

"I think it's kind of pretty in a way," she said. Her optics moved toward the rusting tower on their side of the river And she appeared to study it intently for a moment, before she added slowly, "I.. I can almost imagine what that bridge much have looked like in it's day."

"There are surely some still existing photo-files somewhere," Soundwave answered, thinking.

"Do you think the world will ever be what it once was again?" Firestorm wondered out loud.

"Someday," Soundwave replied, assuring her where he could only hope his was right. "It will take centuries... but, someday..."

"I can't wait to see what our world will become one day..."

"Firestorm?"

"Hmm...?

"May I ask you a question?"

"Of course you can."

The mini-bot sat up much straighter then. And when she turned around to face him, still seated on the ground, Soundwave held her hands in his and smiled.

"Today in the training gym..." he said, unsure of exactly how to explain his own thoughts out loud once he'd committed to doing just that. "I... did not mean for you to become so angry. I only meant to show you how to feel safer..."

"And you want to know what happened?" Firestorm guessed calmly. But suddenly she looked so unmistakably sad again before she lowered her head down to rest on Soundwave's armour.

"Yes..."

"I don't... I don't exactly know really. I just go so mad at no one and everyone all at once. It was those two that beat me up of course... but so much more than just them, too..."

"Your poor spark has been hurt for a while..." Soundwave said, realizing. And he really understood only then, that it really had been a good amount of time that she'd been so defeated. And he'd never seen hint of it. But slowly he saw her nod her head a little, while it still rested against him. And he just hugged her then.

"You never said a word about it," he said. "You surely know I would have listened if you'd only tried to talk to me."

"I... I know you would have," Firestorm replied. She sounded so clearly uncertain now, regretful and almost silly. And she looked up at him again, with serious optics. "But... you have so much to live with and deal with already. You still have nightmares almost every night... I don't think you always know it in the morning, but I do. And... I see your other struggles so clearly. Your fear of medics... the loss of your carrier... the guilt from the war..."

"Firestorm," Soundwave said firmly. He pulled her gently against his frame again. He took a moment to let Laserbeak free when her silent request for her freedom from his docking mount, echoed urgently through his awareness. And he watched the bird a second as she flew in wide happy circles high above the river. Slowly he finished his thought, or at least he tried his best to. "Never think for even a second that my own pain and struggles mean more than yours... that mine are greater, or that it all makes me unable to help you. I... want to help. I want to listen... to try my best, just like you do for me."

His thoughts wandered for a moment to the Autobots – all they had done for one another and the rest of the population with so little regard for their own misfortunes. Ratchet, who he knew had been a battle field medic for so long he'd surely seen things no bot could ever unsee, and still devoted his days to repairing anybot who needed repairing, because it was his spark's true calling. Or Knockout, new to the Autobot forces – a fellow defector himself, doing his very best to help the confused and the broken despite severe disability and endless nightmares of his own. Then there were Bumblebee and Smokescreen, younger Autobots, who loved and served their cause, working for some great future for the new generation, despite barely having had true youngling-hoods themselves. If they could all achieve so much, while so much stood against them, Soundwave began to understand he truly could as well.

"May I ask you a question, now?" Firestorm asked, after another long moment of both bots just looking out happily over the landscape. She moved again, laying on the smooth ground with he head resting on his knees, and a smile on her face-plate. Soundwave nodded, smiling back.

"Why do you love me of any bot on Cybertron," the mini-bot asked him slowly. And her tone was entirely serious, as she added instantly. "So many bots would surely dream of the love of a bot like you. You could surely have your choice..."

Soundwave might have laughed then, if only her expression had not been so entirely serious. So, unsure what exactly to say or do, he just sat blinking a little and floored. The question, it seemed to him entirely, was one that he may well have asked her one day, but for her to question the very same of him...

"There is no other hope of love for me," Soundwave answered, his mind made up that he had best try to say something, because she was just staring up at him, curious and expectant.

"So you've said before," Firestorm replied. But she shook her head, still in his lap, and continued on intently. "I just don't believe it's true. So many bots on the planet today... they hope for someone strong and smart, and... patient. someone who can listen, protect them... and tell them everyday that they are the centre of his world..." She looked up at him a second, with her optics almost sad, and added, her voice completely serious, "Some days I fear more than anything that one day soon you'll leave because you found someone so much better."

"There is no one better," Soundwave answered, still floored entirely by exactly what he was hearing. How, he wondered to himself silently, could anyone expect he might leave the bot who had taught him what it meant to love?

He hoped she would speak to him again in answer. But she didn't, instead just laying where seh was on the ground, her head on his knees, just smiling with a look that said she believed him.

"What happened to your creators?" Soundwave asked suddenly, a good moment later... changing the subject because he was curious. After he had asked the question though, he regretted it in under a second, because her face-plate fell a little. She sat up again on the ground, turning to look up at him, blinking, her optics dimming a little. And finally she just slowly shook her head.

"I... I don't think you really want to know that..." she said. And she looked down at the ground.

"Of course I do," said Soundwave, determined now. "Unless you simply don't wish to talk about it."

"They were..." Firestorm began to say, still looking at the ground. "They were... off-lined by Decepticons." She looked up again at Soundwave. But her optics never quite met his, before she slowly looked down again. "I was too young then to know a thing about it all, but my brother once told me everything. My carrier's main duty was always to explore planet surfaces for any possibility of habitation or salvage of material... part of a team of refugees that did this work. One day my creator decided he would go along when the team found such a world. No one knew it yet but those 'cons had found the world at the same time our ship had, and they were already on their way."

"They fought, of course," she added, sounding sadder by the second as she went on speaking. "Because both teams wanted the world and whatever might have been on it to use. My carriers' crew surely tried too. But they were only refugees, and out numbered... eleven neutrals died that day in a war most didn't even believe in."

Soundwave listened to her just as carefully as he could. But his tank flipped hard, and his head felt like it was spinning well before she'd finished explaining. His spark dropped hard with his sudden shame and rage and horror. His vision quickly clouded, and he understood only long seconds after the fact that heavy coolant tears, covering his optics before they fell, were to blame for that.

"Firestorm," he said, well aware of the horrible shaking of his voice just as soon as he tried speaking. "I am sorry..."

"Well, it was hardly your fault," Firestorm answered, her tone strangely calm and understanding, as she smiled assurance, her optics finally meeting his.

"My people... the faction of my loyalties... your own family off-line..." Soundwave said, trying hard just to explain himself, while he fought back further coolant tears but couldn't. ""How can... you not hate me...?"

"The 'cons that killed my creators... Soundwave, those were a shipload of sparkless scavengers. The story's always gone that they were likely outcasts from the faction... surviving on the scraps left behind throughout the universe. How can I blame you for something when you weren't even there?"

"I am still to blame by... affiliation..."

"You weren't a Decepticon anymore by the time I first met you," Firestorm said. And the tone of her voice and the look on her face-plate said that she meant it all entirely. She held his hands in hers again, and smiled almost sadly. "At least you weren't to me. And it doesn't matter what just a few bots of any faction do or don't do. Everyone should be judged for themselves... isn't that what Auotbots believe?"

########

Soundwave was anxious as he stood in the hall, his hand poised to knock on the door of the police captain's 'downtown' office. It was only some great urging from Laserbeak, riding happily enough on his right shoulder, that made him finally knock lightly on the door. And he knocked again, just a bit harder, when after a good few minutes there was no answer at all.

The door slid open then, without anyone inside even bothering to first inquire as to who it was outside. And Ultra Magnus – who clearly had simply not heard the far too quiet knocking the first time, looked up from his seat behind a large but simple metal desk in front of a large window.

"Soundwave," the police bot said, clearly surprised but not negatively so, by his unexpected visitor. And he gestured at once to a padded and armed chair across the desk from his own. His face-plate showed a slight hint of a smile. "Please. Come in."

Soundwave took the offered chair, still nervously. And for a moment, he just stat, looking out that large window, at the view of the third floor office of the mostly empty side street, below him, that ran behind the main road through the city. A clean up crew of Autobots and refugees worked a ways from the road collecting bits and debris left over from what just a week or two before had been the rubble of one more war ruined building. Arcee worked among them, obviously chatting happily and laughing with some refugee while they stacked metal sheets in a pile beside the walkway. And her youngling, Cybershock was so clearly just as eager to help as any adult bot. Soundwave laughed a little, smiling slightly in amusement, as he watched the small femmling – clearly an exceptional confidant climber for a child – as she clambered easily up and down a mostly stable stack of metal bricks and framework bits, grabbing anything small enough for her to lift, and tossing it down the ground below her.

Soundwave's optics went then to the stack of datapads that sat on the desk. And it was easy to assume that most were still waiting to be read and filed away. And two more pads were at fact open, both of them at once, on the surface of the desk.

"I... hope I haven't come at an... inconvenient time," Soundwave stated. But the police captain only shook his head a little.

"There hasn't been a time since I landed back on Cybertron, that I haven't been swamped with more work than any bot could ever got done," he said, chuckling a little and looking down at the two open pads. "And in any case, a short visit is always a wonderful excuse to take a short break."

The police-bot yanked open a drawer on his own side of the desk, and pulled out a small package, which he opened to reveal snacks made from pulverized metal, ground to fine power, before it was compressed again into solid little flat sweets. He took one for himself, and offered them to Soundwave, who reached for one himself slowly after some hesitation.

"Thank you again for your fast action in recusing Firestorm from her... situation... in the elevator," he said, unsure exactly how one should even really speak of such a matter in polite society. And the police-bot nodded just a little, munching slowly on a bit from the treat he held close to his mouth.

"All part of the job," he said, his tone one of obvious assurance. "It's just like I said that day it all happened. I'm glad of my timing... if I hadn't somehow left my needed notes inside my apartment and gone home to get them..." He paused again for just a second, before speaking again. "She is doing much better now, according to her file..."

"Affirmitive..." Soundwave answered, nodding before he realized just how strange that sounded to most bots in day to day discussions. He removed his face-plate covering, sure it was quite alright to do so, and finally had a small taste of the decent sized treat in his hand. He offered some of it to Laserbeak too of course, allowing her to grab a bit he'd broken off for her in her beak – much to the laughing amusement of the police-bot. And slowly he shook his head a little, before he muttered, "yes. She is much better. Thank you."

"Glad as anything to hear that. I stand by my previous statement when it comes to Firestorm... she's a one of a kind sort of bot, and certainly something truly special."

"I have been teaching her to fight. She's far from the sort to be fighting with anyone. But she needs to be safe... to protect herself here."

"A little skill with self defence is certainly never a bad thing," Ultra Mugnus mused, nodding his approval. He leaned across the desk, reaching absently for one of his datapads, which he closed and shoved into a stack of them on the shelf behind him.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" he continued quickly.

"I..." Soundwave began to answer, far too nervously and he knew it. "I have done some good thinking... about your offer of a position on the patrol..."

"And?" Ultra Magnus was clearly amused again.

"I want to accept," Soundwave said, just as quickly as he could manage to. "...If the offer is still open that is..."

He saw Ultra Magnus nod his head at once in reply. And clearly he was more than pleased.

########

"Firestorm." Ratchet demanded firmly. And he tapped the back of head lightly with a fingertip. "Cybertron to Firestorm."

The mini-bot jumped a little, when she felt the light and somewhat humorous tapping. And hearing Ratchet calling her realized he'd clearly been doing so for at least a good moment. She shook her head just a little, shaking off her haze of distracted thoughts, and made herself look at him again as she turned to face him.

"I'm sorry, Ratchet," she mumbled, shaking her head again.

"You need to pay attention!" the old medic half snapped back at her with a hint of a smile on his face-plate. "I don't need to tell you twice that this is important."

Firestorm just nodded then right back at him, smiling a wiry and anxious smile. And she glanced at the closed door in front of where they stood – a door she'd barely noticed before at the back of Ratchet's workshop. He'd yanked a worktable out from in front of it just to get to the door, and she knew why it had gone unnoticed, mostly hidden behind that table stacked with scrap metal parts.

"Are you feeling okay," the old bot questioned, clearly in medic mode again just judging by his tone. And again, Firestorm just nodded with a smile on her face-plate.

"The new programming is still a bit strange," she admitted slowly, considering. She'd never before been so innately aware of the direction she was facing in reference to the planet's distant poles And suddenly the fact that her body was at present zero metres from the level of the floor, when standing on her feet, mattered to her navigation systems. "I... understand what you really meant now when you said it's not so easy..." she smiled, nervously again.

"The world does look just a little different from the perspective of a flyer," Ratchet said. But his tone was confidant and he smiled wider, resting a hand on her shoulder panel and reaching out to slide open the door. "It may just start to make more sense when you start to really learn to fly."

Firestorm just nodded her understanding then, nervous and excited, uncertain and curious all in one single moment. The old bot walked on into the room, and she followed him quickly, because though he hadn't invited her to follow, he hadn't told her not to either.

The room they'd walked into was a simple one - nearly empty with a couple of chairs by the wall seemingly for little reason at all, and a large computer set up on a worktable on the far end. The walls were painted white, and in the centre of the room, in the middle of four blue allows facing toward each other and seemingly painted on the floor, was some simple white circle on the grey slate tile.

"It's a little bit silly really," Ratchet remarked, absently and chuckling a little, as he wandered slowly toward the large computer screen and its interface controls. "During the time we served, stationed on Earth, we would choose our alt modes by scanning them directly. It was... always just the simplest and the quickest way. And of course we'd get a perfect match that way..." he chuckled again, watching the screen as the computer quickly began to power up. "We hid in plain sight. Yes, it was practical. Yes it was certainly entirely necessary as you can surely imagine, as the humans as a rule knew nothing of our presence at all on their planet and no one would look twice at some plain old vehicle parked on the curb... but we grew to like the culture... the world that we blended into. Some Earth machines made it into the system here..." he nodded toward the computer.

"The system?" Firestorm questioned him, curious. She crept closer, watching over his shoulder as he pressed a few buttons, typing in code. Her own processor still insisted somehow she needed to know she was zero meters from the ground and her optics now faced East-North-East.

"This system," Ratchet answered. He looked up just long enough to smile in her direction, before he went back to his fast typing. "This whole set up is basically a library of alt-modes. Many traditional Cybertronian, but now mixed in, as I said before, with those Earth forms I told you about. All sorted by size and category... two wheelers, four wheelers... a few three wheelers of course. Tanks, and shuttles, a train and some buses... and a whole lot of aircraft."

Firestorm remembered something much like that on board the ship she'd grown up and rode home on – a library of forms somewhere on the second level deck. But theirs was small, limited, and most bots had called it well out dated, and the technology almost unreliable. She had never even used it herself – instead choosing to scan her brother for a near copy of his alt mode, when she decided, well past an age she should have had one already, that she wanted to see if she could transform like any undamaged bots could do.

Windstorm had quite clearly been almost mildly annoyed at first. Firestorm giggled a little to herself just remembering that now. But she had idolized her brother in her youngling years. And he knew it well. He was proud of it, and proud of her. So of course in under an hour he was laughing just as hard as she was, while he simply taught her to drive in the corridor, just as straight as she could, as a smaller version of himself in their alt modes. He had painted small identification plates for them as well, just like that that many of the bots on board their ship seemed to like to wear for whatever reason on the fenders of their own alt modes. And in his careful code, their matched ID plates showed the Cybertronian symbols for 'wind' and 'fire' respectively. She still had his ID plate. It was something she'd been glad at the idea of keeping forever when he died. It stayed now safe, hidden and protected in a cupboard under the energon dispenser. And she'd always worn hers. She thought perhaps she could still wear it mounted somewhere on her flying form.

"Our computer here has found at least a few logical possibilities," Ratchet's voice said, again dragging her away from her thoughts. And she watched the screen again, to see that it was sure enough calling up detailed images, after he had typed in her size details.

"I'm surprised you came alone," the medic said absently, his tone clearly just one of causal conversation, as he rechecked everything he had just typed, before nodding a little to himself, obviously satisfied. "I'd assumed Soundwave would want to help you choose a flying mode..."

"I asked him to come," Firestorm said. She chuckled just a little, and shrugged, understanding. "He said no way. He wants to see the choice be all my own, without any influence from him..."

Firestorm watched the screen again, intently as more images loaded, letting something appeal to her most from the possible images. And after a good while of just staring, almost overwhelmed by it all – and her processor still just a little overwhelmed by new data she was not yet used to – she found herself drawn most to the form of an Earth vehicle... a small and light high performance pleasure craft labelled somewhere in the code that made up its notes, as both 'civilian use' and 'stunt craft.'

"Something about this almost screams bad idea, loud enough to make me pay attention to it," Ratchet grumbled when her choice had become obvious. But he shook his head and chuckled just a little, anyway.

"You remember exactly how to scan a form?" the old bot asked. And Firestorm nodded, confidant. She'd only ever done it once, much like many other bots. But still, it was an inborn and almost instinctive function.

She jumped back, startled and amazed all at once when Ratchet tapped another button, somehow causing a 3D projection of the imagine on the screen to appear clearly in the centre of the room. It's middle lined up closely with the middle of the circle on the floor. And she understood now, looking closely at the entire set up, that it was that that the image was projected from.

Firestorm scanned the 3D image, and stood still beside the old Autobot, waiting as her processor made and saved a a perfect copy of the vehicle mode. Then she stood still for a long moment more, well aware of her body's alt mode components shifting, changing, everything adapting quickly for flight where once it had been ready for the road.

It didn't hurt of course to shift her form like that. But it certainly was odd... and almost unexpected because she'd almost forgotten what it had been like to scan her very first alt mode close to a century before. And she stepped backwards quickly, bumping hard against the wall, off balance and startled, when the inner motion stopped and she could move again.

Stepping forward again, catching her balance, she turned, catching a glimpse of herself, reflected then in the now darkened large monitor of the computer system. The screen was too small, and too high up of course, to see herself completely. But she stared for a good long moment at the pair of wings attached to the back of her frame, before she turned away from the screen again to look down her own feet, at landing gear parts and the tiny landing wheels that had replaced the heavy treadded tires that had once been powered by her rear wheel drive train.

"From here I just can't help you," Ratchet told her, chuckling with a smile on his face-plate again. He rested a hand on her shoulder, as he lead her back out of the room. And then he shook his head just a little. "The only times I've ever strayed from firmly on the ground are the many times I've climbed a ladder... frankly even that almost makes me nervous. You were born for the skies... I realize that completely by now, although I still can't say I'll fully understand it myself." He gave another little chuckle, walking with her down a back hallway, that lead to a door out into the courtyard behind what was once the Autobot base.

"Soundwave can teach you everything from here," he continued, gesturing toward said bot, who sure enough waited for them sitting on a bench closest to the building's outside wall. And they watched as he stood up slowly, another of his increasingly common little smiles on his damaged face-plate.


	15. Chapter 15

_Roughly ten Earth years later_

Shortwave held tightly to the the ship's control board, and she shoved her right knee tight against a support somewhere beneath it, struggling not to loose her footing on the smooth metal floor as the craft tilted hard to the side. Bracing herself just as well as she could that way, Shortwave moved one hand from its place still holding the control board front, so that she could reach forward over the controls, intent on flipping a blue switch close to the back.

She smiled for just a second with her victory, just a millimetre away from flipping it, when a blast slammed against the side of the ship. And the shock of that blast sent her felling immediately to the floor, before she had time to even hold on again.

"Fragging scrap," Shortwave grumbled, sprawled face-plate down on the cold metallic flooring. And she took just a second, about as long as she could spare, to make sure she could move undamaged.

"Carrier!" cried Blastwave, alarmed somewhere beside her.

"I'm good, Blast. I'm good," Shortwave answered, picking herself up from the floor, only to stumble while only halfway back into her feet, as the ship rocked sideways again from another hit. She watched her creation as he grabbed at once for the front of the panel himself, and hung on, able to avoid falling.

And now that she had just a second to do so, she turned her head a little, looking behind her, at Lightwave – still strapped into a seat, and silent as ever. The smaller youngling was slipping too, falling to the left against the cargo strap which held her in place. But there was no time to help her then, no opportunity to cross the flight deck to do so. As much as Shortwave obviously did not want her to fall, she knew the height was hardly dangerous.

"The stabilizer switch, Blast," Shortwave told her son, sure he would reach it because he was always so quick when he was trying.

"Got it," the young bot answered the second his fingertips hit the same blue switch his carrier's had missed before she fell. And the ship at once regained at least partial barrings in space.

"Carrier," Blastwave was starring at the monitors mounted to above the control board, now. And he watched the view outside, as a small small, dented scouting ship circled their own to fly on it's other side. "He's powering up again. He's going to hit us."

"Let him," Shortwave answered, confidant as ever, now that she was once again back on her feet. The blasts her ship had taken so far from the small ship, flying it's strange simply side switching pattern to fire at one side and then the other and back again, had certainly been enough to knock them around. But still the blasts were small, because the weapons were weak. And she knew it would take many more blasts then it could likely offer to cause serious damage to her ship.

"They are just Deception scavengers," Shortwave explained. She took over the control board again, pressing buttons, inputting code and just becoming all out annoyed at the nuisance outside. "The question is do they not know the war is over yet, or do they simply not care?"

"Are we going to fire back, Carrier?" asked Blastwave. His small frame moved slowly closer to hers, and he looked up at her, his large youngling optics wide with uncertainty. Clearly he feared the war he'd grown up thus far aware of, and may now have landed on his doorstep.

"No, we are not," Shortwave said, her hand already on the comm switch far from the blasters. "We are Autobots, Blast'. Shooting first and asking questions later, just isn't how we do things."

She cursed loudly, when the 'cons of board the ship beside them failed to answer to her singling bleeps via comms. And her cursing grew louder, when instead they simply fired again on her ship.

"Blastwave!" she cried, optics locking a second on the youngling, before she turned to scan the monitors, and the readout underneath, before she finally grabbed hold on the console again, bracing with her bent knees against an impact she know was about to hit them hard. "Hold on!"

"I'm good," the youngling answered back, and Shortwave trusted that indeed he was.

Blast' may have been young – just past halfway through his third frame years. But he was capable, and he knew how to survive and function on board just as well as any bot, because indeed that life on board the ship was the only one he had ever known. And sure enough he stayed on his feet, holding the edge of the control board as the ship rocked hard from the next hard hit from blaster fire.

"Carrier, what do we do now?" he asked, optics wider, but his hands still holding tight to the metal front of the thing. Another hit closely followed right behind the first. And Shortwave watched the Youngling fall, dropping hard to his knees from the force of the impact.

She herself could barely manage to reach the comm then, sent rocking forward herself, and almost meeting the floor again, before she grabbed quickly for a support brace. She finally did manage it though, tapping the comm switch twice, to send out two fast little chimes of inquiry to the other ship. Her call was met only with another blast of its weapons, which only made her angry.

"Blastwave," she called across the length of the console. Her hand gestured a little while the other let go of her hand hold again to reach for the stabilizer and flip it again. "The targeting system above your hands... work on that. Track that ship and target it."

"On it," Blast' answered, reaching with one hand like any trained engineer, while the other still held on.

Shortwave knew from decent experience that her ship's own weapons, mounted to underside and facing forward, were more then powerful enough to blast a ship like the one currently attacking, right into tiny bits of floating metal. It didn't hurt things either that the 'con ship was old, and clearly held together in places by little more then rusted bolts. And acting fast, she grabbed for the steering control, and turned her ship to face toward the one she was currently at odds with.

Still, she did not fire though – not while there may still have been hope. Instead, she tapped the comms again, a short succession of fast near frustrated taps against the button this time. She only hopped that might get her point across – that she had had just about enough of trying to be civil. Finally, her urgently and hopeful flagging of the 'con ship yielded static from the other end, and she sighed her relief, still hoping for more than that.

"What... is wanted... _Autobot?_ " someone with clearly bad grammar and an obviously bad attitude barked across the commlink. And the contempt with which he had named her faction made her cringe inwardly just a little. She watched the small screen then, right above the comms set up. And she did see an image or the bot she now spoke with. But it was fuzzy, barely enough to be sure it was even a bot at all if she hadn't already known that. She certainly could not tell anything of what he actually looked like.

"I don't need your attitude... _Decepticon_..." she snapped boldly, daring to repeat his own faction in the same contempt he had shown to hers, only because he had done so first. "I comm'd you out of courtesy." She smirked at the fuzzy image of the bot, unsure if her own image was any less fuzzy to him. "The war is over, 'con. Just thought you might like to know that before you continue trying to blow away a habitation ship containing younglings. And I am no threat to you. I'm flying on a simple mission to get my own children to safety."

"War is... not over!" the 'con scavenger roared into his end of the commlink. "War never be over until Deceptions win!"

"The war is over." Shortwave's answer to the 'con's screaming was short and to the point, delivered in an even tone of finality. After just a second though, and as an afterthought, she added, gloating slightly, "Megatron is dead. Did you not get the memo that was blasted out to every bot ship in range?"

"Megatron... was fool!" the Decepticon snarled back. "We not need him. We fellow new master now. New great leader... who work to unite our forces!"

"Who is this new master of yours?" Shortwave's anger was giving way to real worry by now. And she stared at the comm-screen, holding her optics in a serious glare to hide her nervousness. She had never exactly held any real rank among her faction. But he may not have known that.

The comm-call was cut then however, by the viscous 'con. And obviously he had chosen to answer now with his weapon instead of his words. Because another blast hit the front of the ship. Shortwave would have warned her youngling to hold on again. But there was clearly no need, as she was instantly holding tight to the control board again.

Shortwave reached for her controls, and powered up her own ships weapons. But still, she did not wish to blow the other ship away if she could avoid it. Not with the war over at least from her perspective. And the bots on board that ship were, to her still just fellow Cybertronians, as much as they were enemies. So, instead of firing at once at full power, as it may well have seemed for a moment she might have done, she fired only a few small warning shots against the side of the enemy ship in front of her own.

"Cowards," she mumbled under an intake, when the small dilapidated scavenger ship turned around at once, retreating just as fast as the old and slow thing could possibly have gone. "Just like some rust ridden old cyberhound...no bite left, but they sure like to bark a lot."

"They are leaving, Carrier," Blastwave smiled. But the fear so well expected from any youngling, caught up to him quickly, now that it could. And the smile left his face-plate again, to be replaced by his wide optic'd trembling in his delayed panic reaction.

"Come here, Blast," Shortwave said. And she held her arms out at once, as the ship fully stabilized itself.

"Carrier, I... thought we... we might b... be offlined for sure... th... this time," Blastwave said, stammering badly as his frame trembled just a bit harder.

It was hard to remember sometimes that Blastwave was indeed still a youngling. He was, at least in general, self sufficient and adult for his half century of existing. But he nevertheless was, and Shortwave vowed for the next countless time, to always remember that.

"You will never go offline as long as I'm alive to prevent it," Shortwave promised. And she smiled down at him, just as soon as he slowly let go of her, and backed up a step, his look almost sheepish as he did. And Shortwave just chuckled with laughter at his look.

She turned then to look over the second and far smaller of her younglings – a tiny girl still secured into her seat across the control room. Shortwave ran over at once, unstrapping the tiny bot from the improvised harness that she'd once rigged up for her from heavy tie downs and salvaged clips. And inclined the seat, which had been tilted back a good degree for safety, and caught the tiny thing as soon as she fell forward immediately just as soon as the straps were lifted away from her shoulders and across her middle.

"The very same goes for you too, Lightwave," Shortwave said to her smaller child, sitting down with her on the floor, holding her in her lap, supporting her head which the youngling could barely support by herself. She held her tightly, watching her red optics blink just a little in a simple and crude show that she understood that she was being talked to. "You'll be safe as long as I have a thing to do with it..."

"Mama," said Blastwave, who joined them eagerly, sitting on the floor beside his carrier. He gently grabbed his sister's small hands in each of his and swung them playfully for a second, before he stopped that again and began to work just as his carrier had taught him, bending and unbending her fingers and turning her wrist joints slowly to the left and right. His optics stared up at his carrier though as he worked, still clearly so shaken up and fearful.

It had seemed like he'd been about to say more. His tone, in which he'd said that simple word, had sounded like one at the start of a question. But he said nothing more after all. And instead he just sat quietly, working with his sister's hands because he'd always loved to help her more then anything. Lightwave emitted a tiny hint of a pleased little whirring, and her optics half closed.

"Just how much do you think she really understands?" Blast' asked after a long moment in which they had all just kind of sat still. And Shortwave looked at him for a second, dismayed. He'd never asked much about his sister's state before – never asked much about anything really. Instead it seemed he;d always just accepted life quietly for whatever it was, and never wondered on the hows and the the whys.

"I... don't know that, Blast'" Shortwave answered slowly, taking a second to think a little bit herself. "She knows her designation very well... you see how she blinks when we call her by name. And you hear that little whirring of hers... you see now, she's half way to recharging? She knows she likes and appreciates you helping with her wiring."

"Light knows who we are?"

"Of course she knows that, Blast."

"She just... kinda watches and takes life in then," Blastwave reasoned. And Shortwave just smiled at him, agreeing with his reasoning, though she'd never thought much about it.

"Will she ever have more to take in?" Blast' asked next – another question from a youngling who so rarely questioned. "More than just this ship and space I mean, Mama..."

"Indeed she will," Shortwave told him, smiling now because she'd wanted to explain before the attacking 'cons had stopped all thought of it. And so will you, my young one. We are close to Cybertron now."

"Cybertron?" Blastwave paused abruptly in his task of gently moving his sister's tiny right hand, bending the first finger to unkink its wire, and stared up at his carrier with amazement on his face-plate. "It really is a real place, Mama?"

Shortwave just chuckled a little. And she shifted Lightwave slightly in her lap, tilting her back as she drifted toward recharge. And she gently pushed the tiny hand back into Blastwave's again, encouraging him to keep working, because the little one was so clearly enjoying it.

"Of course it's a real place, youngling," she smiled. "It's my home... our home..."

"It's just hard to believe..." Blast' said. And he looked around for a moment wistfully and smiling, before he reached to take his sister from their carrier so that he could hold her for a while himself – something he'd always liked to do, and was always so careful when doing. "A planet... a whole world filled with bots just like us... with fresh clean air and sunshine, and buildings and..."

He stopped then – a youngling born in space who barely knew what to expect from a world at all.

"And... open sky," Shortwave told him, smiling brighter now. She watched Light' blink again twice quickly and once much slower, and reached out to tap Blast's small wings gently. "Wide open endless skies that go on forever. You're learn to really fly on Cybertron, and we can fly for miles without ever stopping..."

"I bet they have some good medics too," Blast' said, his tone hopeful. "One who can look at Lightwave... maybe help her some..." He watched his sister, still in his lap, with a smile on his face-plate.

"I certainly plan to seek one out," Shortwave answered, slowly. She gently took hold of the tiny youngling girl's feet, while brother held her easily, pulling her bent knees straighter, letting go and pulling down toward herself again. And she smiled at both younglings while she worked.

She'd been running the ship at close to full power for weeks on end, despite any risk that could well have brought her small family. And the need of a medic – the hope of reaching Cybertron faster to find one – was the thing that had made her make the risky decision.

Lightwave had never had never been strong. It was clear from the second she was born that she was nothing like the last two newsparks had been when they integrated into frames. She never had began to fully function, or been healthy. Now, after slightly more than seven years, her spark only grew weaker by the day.

"What about Soundwave?" Blast' asked suddenly, again surprising Shortwave with his question. "You... used to talk all the time about how I have a brother somewhere... you haven't in a while..."

"I suppose I haven't..." Shortwave felt some hint of regret now, realizing that although Blast' was so often quiet, he certainly paid attention anyway.

"Do you suppose he's still alive and well... somewhere on Cybertron perhaps? Maybe he grew up. Survived the war... has his own life now."

"I... refuse to believe that isn't possible."

"Maybe he's looking for you too, Mama," Blast suggested, youngling innocence and hope clear in his voice. "With the war over on our home world, there's gotta be thousands of bots, all looking for each other as their ships come home. Maybe... there's some kind of registry for anyone looking for anyone else?"

"That may be so," Shortwave said, smiling at him. The youngling certainly had hope. And she sat still for a moment in her place on the floor, just enjoying the emotion she saw in his optics, because by then she certainly needed a little hope of her own.

"What was he really like, Mama?" Blast asked then. "My... brother..." And Shortwave thought a moment, remembering, and smiling while she did.

"He was... quiet," she said thoughtfully. "Even more than you are. His designation was, in hindsight anyway, perhaps almost ridiculous considering how little sound I ever heard from him... ever." She laughed a little then, reflecting, and slowly she continued. "He was dismantling broken circuit boards for parts and wire... rebuilding it all into new fully working ones, when he was Lightwave's age. But he was so... well.. different. How can I even explain it? I hated his creator so much for how much he clearly resented him...That old bot was nothing but a raging fool to reject his own son..."

"You were better off with mine and Light's creator." Blast said then, certainly blunt for a youngling – but just blunt enough to sound just like himself. Shortwave smiled brighter then for a hint of a second, before she gave a tiny laugh and nearly cried all the same time. She thought in that second that Blast sounded so much like Soundwave – another strangely blunt youngling the rare times he had spoken much.

"I was better off," she said honestly. And she blinked back the tears, choosing to smile brighter instead. "He and I.. we made each other happy. He was my second chance at love when I thought I'd never get one. And I'm thankful to him everyday for giving me you and your sister..."

"I still miss him sometimes... Well, okay, a lot of times..." Blastwave said, seriously and sad. He did miss him, and Shortwave knew it. And Lightwave had never got to know him."

"Do you think he's okay, somewhere in the well, with all the other sparks," Blast' asked. And Shortwave nodded firmly without needing to give it a thought.

"Mama?"

"Yes, Blast'"

"What did that, Decepticon mean when he talked about following a new master now?"

"I don't know, Blast'" Lightwave said seriously, while still sitting on the floor.

She truly didn't know much at all. She had always been nobody within the Autobot ranks. And nobodies just weren't always told much, unless they needed to now it a the times they might have asked. And now it was far too late for questions, as there was no one around that she could ask those questions to. But had her guesses, and her fears for what it meant, and chose to hide such things for her child – still too young to be troubled by such matters.

"Another reason to hurry toward Cybertron," she said simply. She smiled a little – let it all be some new grand adventure. "We need reach headquarters and warn the Autobots."

* * *

"Knockout," Arcee mumbled, impossibly fretful, from her place on a bench in the front row of the stands, behind the railing that surrounded the racetrack. She reached out to grab her bondmate's arm, careful all the while not to distract him from his focus on the timer he held in his hand. "Don't you think she's going a little fast...?"

"That's kind of the idea, Arcee," Knockout told her, with a laugh clearly meant to dismiss her concerns. "To beat her previous best time... something she can't exactly hope to do by going slower." He leaned on the railing that surrounded the track in front of them, making sure he wouldn't lose his still just slightly weak footing, while he watched the timer in his hand.

"I know. I know... but..." Arcee tried to protest, laughing just a little, albeit nervously, while Knockout laughed back at her grinning.

Arcee said nothing more, looking instead intently at her youngling, who raced still faster around the long track – a tiny light blue Fortwo 'Smart' car with red highlighted side panels, who clearly imagined then that she was something much closer to being a Ferrari.

Coolant tears filled Arcee's optics then. And she blinked then away, leaning forward in her seat on the bench in the front row of the spectator stands, trying hard to hide it as more flowed freely to replace them. She batted at the tears helplessly with the back of her hand, and forced her face-plate into a smile with such effort that it hurt. When more tears fell, despite all of her helpless (and she hopefully discrete enough,) almost violent wiping, and the forced smile, she just took helpless desperate intakes, close now to hating herself for her weakness in so suddenly sobbing at the racetrack, of any place on Cybertron.

"Arcee?" said Knockout, dropping to sit on the bench close beside her. She felt his arms wrap around her frame at once, and she just sat stiff in his light hold on her, still staring straight ahead, through a blur of tears, at the track in front of her... at bluish, red highlighted blur of her youngling, who may just have gained still more speed.

"Yes?" she said, fighting painfully hard to stop her voice from shaking with her tears, and more painfully still to force an air of cheerfulness into it besides. She just kept staring straight ahead, before she finally turned her head away from her mate even more in a convincing show of following the youngling's path out of the track, to hide her coolant soaked face-plate.

"Arcee..." Knockout's voice was firm, and she knew he wasn't buying the act for a second. He sadly never did. "Talk to me, please."

"There isn't much to talk about," Arcee said. And she still batted horribly at her tears, despite him so clearly knowing all about them anyway. "Nothing new anyway." New tears of coolant fell. And it didn't seem to matter how hard she refused to let them. Arcee slammed her foot backwards against the metal support of the bench behind her in frustration, and silently cursed her lack of any control. "Just... another year gone without a newspark..."

"Arcee... We still never know. This could be our year..." Knockout was clearly trying his best. But Arcee was suddenly just so angry without even knowing why exactly. And so she kicked the bench again, almost hurting herself in doing it, but not exactly caring.

"Our year of what?" she grumbled, miserable and despairing. "Another year of hoping more than anything for some miracle? Another year of broken sparks again and again while we wonder what we ever did so wrong?"

"Arcee..." Knockout still sounded almost hopeful, through his helplessness. "Maybe we should talk to Ratchet again..."

"We know what he'll say... that there's no real reason why we can't manage to... You know these days I actually wish there was some real problem. Because problems can be fixed. This is Cybertron, and science is just something so many bots do very well!"

"We'll just keep trying..."

"No," Arcee answered him, suddenly forceful. She looked up at him then, finally daring to turn her coolant filled optics in his direction, as she tried even harder than ever to stop her voice from shaking. "I'm done trying... that last negative scan the other day... it was just too much to hear this time."

"Arcee..."

"My spark is breaking, Knockout. One tiny piece at a time and one more piece of it every time we fail again. It's been years and years... I can't do it anymore."

"Maybe it really is best for now..." Knockout nodded slowly. And he almost appeared to fully understand. He just sat a moment, his arms still wrapped tightly around her, until she finally moved to hug him back.

Arcee turned again, back toward the public racetrack. And with her optics less blurry now as her tears began to slowly let up, she watched their only youngling intently.

Cybershock was still very much a child, still just short of her third-frame years now. But she was growing up so fast – too fast perhaps for Arcee's liking. Little by little, she was giving up her toys – she barely seemed to play with any by now. She much preferred electronics, and discovering new music. She still loved the playground, but her play was different now – entirely about challenging herself now, or out competing others for the harmless fun of it when several younglings climbed the bars together, or ran and jumped, swung from bars and climbed so dangerously high. She was strong and fast, and hard to out do at such physical games. And she was becoming so pretty... not the with the prettiness of a cute and adorable tiny youngling bot – but instead of a maturing young Cybertronian.

If the bots of the city, had ever wondered in her earliest years who's child she actually was, surely none could wonder that now. She showed every hint of her carrier's quick temper, but also her passion for justice and a sense of right and wrong. And much to her creator's pride, her paint was always kept shiny and her finish perfect because she could barely imagine not being nearly reflective in the sunlight. She was just as silly as he was too. The pair so rarely stopped their endless antics. And they somehow always seemed to get each other's silliest jokes even when no other bots seemed to do much more then roll their optics.

And she loved all things automotive – her interest in the subject now easily rivalled her creator's passion for it. She had not had her vehicle mode long– she'd only just acquired one on a still so recent trip to Earth... a trip planned in large part to allow her to do exactly that. And her newly altered frame – with small wheels on the outside of each lower leg, and another outside each upper arm, with small wipers comically attached to her shoulder panels – still looked so strange and unexpected. But she was a surprisingly skilled driver considering just how young she was. And her desire to race, kept her carrier on edge.

"I'm not sure she'd even want a sibling now," Arcee mumbled to her mate, while they both watched their youngling – who still drove alone on the empty public use track, blissfully ignorant to her parents' upset.

Neither Arcee, nor Knockout, had ever told her their were even even trying for another little bot. The little family could easily talk about most anything together, because they had always raised her to sit and talk with them, with trust form all sides, about anything. But a subject like that... it just never seemed to easily come up in any conversation. And Arcee, watching her now, was glad now that she had never got around to telling her of good news that just never happened. And surely by now, Cybershock - already old enough that she could transform - would have nothing at all in common with a tiny sibling if she ever were to have had one.

"Mama?" the youngling bot questioned. She'd stopped driving, and had hurriedly transformed back to her bot mode, climbing easily over the railing at over half her own height, before stepping hesitantly toward the bench. "Daddy?"

"Are... are you two okay?" she asked a second later, and she looked from one of them to the other, clearly unsure of where to sit down. Finally though she chose to sit beside Arcee, slowly putting her small arms around her, before half burying her blue face-plate against her carrier's chest panel.

"I'm good, baby. I'm good," Arcee mumbled at the youngling, still half way to helpless to stop herself from crying. And in fact she started crying harder again, as soon as she hugged her.

She tried again to hide it, stubbornly as ever. But Cybershock was no more clueless than her creator. And the little bot just looked at her, concerned and dismayed entirely, while Arcee just shook her head hard with a forced smile on her face-plate.

"Daddy?" the youngling questioned then, looking uncertainly in her creator's direction while still hugging her carrier tightly and trying her best. "What should I...?

"We're fine, Cybershock," Knockout explained, understanding and calmly as ever. "She's just a bit... upset is all."

"Happens to the best of us," the youngling calmly answered back. And Arcee, daring to look at her again while she still fought back the coolant that leaked from the corners of her optics, saw her simply smiling with a look of honest understanding. "You... need anything, Mama?"

Arcee just shook her head in answer to her, forcing a little smile which then slowly became at least the start of a real one.

"No thanks, baby," she said, instantly conflicted by now over wanting to hug her tighter and wanting to gently push her away to spare her from 'grown bot' matters that were certainly not meant to effect her. Finally, after just another good moment of just hugging the child who so clearly didn't mind staying still and letting her, she gestured with her optics back toward the racetrack. "Why don't you go and take one more good run?"

"I'll time you this time," Knockout added, his own smile just slightly forced. And he reached over his mate's frame to rest a hand lightly on their youngling's shoulder panel. "Sorry I didn't get to finish timing properly last time."

"That's okay," Cybershock said, smiling her clear understanding in an instant. And standing up slowly she headed, hesitantly now, back toward the track.

"We really do have the perfect child," Arcee mused, her optics finally beginning to dry, as she watched the little bot back out on the race track. She smiled then, feeling far better. "I'll always be grateful to at least have one... and that of any youngling in the world we got her."

"Go!" Knockout shouted cheerfully at Cybershock, once he reset his timer again, because he'd promised to.

"Arcee..." he said a short moment later, with his hand motioning urgently toward the racetrack. Arcee followed his hand quickly to see a second youngling, a small fast moving bright blue and white roadster-mode, who drove the track behind their own youngling and gained on her quickly. "Who is that?"

"Speedtrap." Arcee's concern was all to clear as she stood up to watch the younglings closer. She recalled the blue and white youngling well from his days in her early learning classroom. And she knew all too well that the said youngling – a little older and certainly bigger then her own – had always been obnoxious for a youngling.

"Any relation to Sideswipe?" Knockout asked, his tone joking cynically when the little blue and white roadster cut out in front of Cybershock at the far side of the track, spinning up metal dust into her headlights and causing her to swerve badly.

"His baby brother..." Arcee muttered, serious despite knowing it might have sounded almost unbelievable. She stood up straighter, her concern growing as she watched Cybershock, still holding her own, drive away from him faster then ever.

Sideswipe's reputation on the racetrack, where he had excelled quickly through the 'master's class of racing, was one of a bully and a hot head. And it was well known how most bots in the league dreaded his presence because of his haughty attitude. This little bot on the track now, may not have grown up alongside his brother. But it clearly made little difference.

"Ha!" the youngling speedster mocked Cybershock, as he spun another spray of dust at her. "Nice alt mode, amateur!"

"Thanks," Cybershock yelled back, and too cheerful and clearly only pretending to be flattered.

"Why don't you race around in the preschool, instead of on the big bot's track... pipsqueak." Speedtrap made a show of driving fast toward the smaller youngling, pretended it might just hit her from the side, before he quickly veered away again, laughing hard.

"Well...that's just about enough..." Arcee mumbled, disbelieving and horrified, as she leapt to her feet ready to run toward the track and already debating how to best get between the pair of younglings to protect hers. But Knockout, to her surprise and dismay grabbed her arm gently from behind, pulling her back lightly until she fell back to to seated position on the first row bench.

"Give this a minute," he said urgently, his tone hushed as he looked toward the track. And despite her more then obvious annoyance, he chuckled just a little with confidence and continued quickly. "Let's let them work this out themselves for a bit. It'll only make it worse if you jump in and 'save' her. He'll call her a 'Mama's bot,' until they're both a century old..."

Arcee, understanding his point at once, reluctantly settled back on the bench.

"Well gee, Speedtrap. I'd love to..." Cybershock called back to the bigger youngling, who now kept perfect pace beside her. "But I think the last spot in there is already yours!"

"Nice!" Knockout exclaimed, under his intakes in a whispered cheer. And beside him, Arcee couldn't help but laugh a little.

"Go... stuff energon in your tail pipe and backfire!" Speedtrap exclaimed, obviously reaching a loss for a more effective insult in what was fast becoming a war of words younglings had always been so known for when settling their own disputes.

"Put yourself in reverse and drive into a really big ditch backwards," Cybershock retorted. She was falling behind the bigger youngling. And he roared off ahead of her for a second or two, before he slowed himself down, clearly on purpose, and just as clearly for the purpose of continuing to pick on her while they sped around the track.

"So..." he said laughing nastily. "You're a 'smart car' huh?"

"Yes... so?"

"Smart car? More like 'dumb car'!"

"Leave me alone, Speedtrap," said Cybershock firmly and with confidence as she reached the painted finish line and her parents on the bench behind it. She left the track, and transformed again to her bot mode with a smirk on her blue face-plate.

"I'd tell you to go play with your friends..." she said, speaking over her shoulder as she walked away from him. "But... I think I'd feel a bit sorry for your friends if I did."

"Humph..." Speedtrap huffed loudly. And once he was back in his own bot mode, he kicked at the ground hard, his frustration and disbelief made more then clear.

* * *

"We'll never catch me, now," Firestorm yelled loudly over the sound of her roaring duel engines. She fired her thrusters in one good burst, and shot forward, daring to roll twice, flipping easily in the open sky as she flew.

She landed easily on the edge of a mountain, her bot mode landing to sit perched on the fronts of her feet just as soon as she had finished transforming quickly in the air, just a head above her landing place. She laughed out loud, the joy of yet another flight at the front of her mind – and her love of it just as fresh as the first day she'd flown. She looked around her, scanning the sky for any sign of Soundwave, but found Laserbeak first, whizzing right toward her with her tiny wings extended. Soundwave followed close behind her though. And he landed on the ridge, with his face-plate full of dismay just as soon as he had transformed.

"An odd place to land, Firestorm," he said. And his head shook a little with his confusion and concern, as she stood, balanced on the narrow ridge, his back to the edge of the near vertical surface of the mountain. "We certainly can't stay here..."

"Why not?" Firestorm protested with a giggle, as she sat down on the too-narrow little ledge without a care about her. She kicked her small feet half a mile in the air, making tiny tinging sounds against the crystal wall below her, and leaned back against the wall behind her. With another giggle of laughter, she tapped her hand playfully against the narrow ledge she sat on – a ledge barely deep enough from front to back to support of upper legs half way to the backs of her bent knees. "I think this works just fine.

Soundwave was of course much bigger than she was, with far longer legs. But still he just managed to sit down on the small narrow ledge himself – on a slightly wider section of it still close by – and he just looked uneasy.

"You can not be afraid of falling off of here..." Firestorm said, teasing playfully as she wiggled herself away from the wall behind her wings, and sat leaning forward, looking down and resting with her elbows on her knees. She looked again again to see shock and near horror on Soundwave's face-plate.

She sat back at once and looked at him, concerned now, and smiling uncertainly, as waited, only hoping he would speak to her, explaining.

"I am not," he said slowly. And his optics locked on hers, with a serious look. "My concern is that you might just fall off..."

"So?" Firestorm questioned back, challenging just a little because it was what she was always best at where he was concerned. She leaned forward again, and this time even more so, extending her arms out in front of her, and pressing her backs of her feet against the smooth crystal wall.

"Fire... storm...!" Soundwave's voice was closer to true panic now, and his hand reached out clearly meaning to grab her in his worry

"Sorry..." Firestorm replied. And she cast him a quick look of confidant assurance, before she let herself fall forward. "I'll... be right back!"

Her upper body pulled her right over itself as she over balanced quite deliberately. And she tumbled over, and right off the ridge. Instantly she was falling and fast in her bot mode. But she just laughed turning a little to raise her wings up toward the wind, letting the breeze and the momentum of her fall carry her out and away from the side of the mountain. And only then did she transform, still in mid fall and with the ground rushing up toward her. Laughing harder, a grin of joy across her face-late now hidden inside her jet mode, she lurched easily forward and up, spinning once and then twice more in the air as she gained impressive speed.

"So, what it I fall?" she asked Soundwave, after she'd landed beside him again and sat herself down.

"Firestorm... I... we... I... you... I think..." Soundwave's verbal communication had only been getting better and better. Until by now there seemed like there had never been any difficulty at all. But suddenly the slight verbal glitching was back, and badly. And Firestorm just looked at him for a moment, concerned and quickly growing more so.

"Do you still worry I'll just never be quite good enough in the air?" she asked him, her question honest and without any hint of any judgment. "Do the rest of our friends still worry I might just mess this up and badly?"

It had certainly been a concern once – for most bots and him only slightly less so. She could hardly have blamed them and she hadn't. She had once been a grounder after all. Still, it had been years already. And neither he, nor anyone else had expressed much true fear for her in a while already.

Soundwave only shook his head in reply, and for a long moment he just sat sill and looking out over the landscape far below.

"Soundwave?" She said. She wiggled over, carefully, to sit close against his frame, and moved to rest her head lightly on his panelling.

"No one worries these days about your flying skill," Soundwave said, just slightly hesitant as he spoke. He pulled her tighter against him, and smiled a little with uncertainty. "If anything, some say you are almost too good."

"Isn't it a good thing to be good at something?" Firestorm asked, laughing a little, as she looked out over the edge of mountain, seeing for miles all at once over endless emptiness of still unrestored, yet to be reclaimed lands, and rubble piles.

"Yes," Soundwave answered her, his hesitation far less now as he smiled at her. "And as for my fear that you still may fall... I fear the impossibly because I truly love you..."

"You dreamed some vivid dreams last night," Firestorm said, changing the subject and hugging him tighter. "I know you did because I can always tell. I don't know though this time if they were bad dreams..."

"They were not bad," Soundwave answered, thoughtful. "I dreamed of my carrier..."

"I haven't heard you talk about her much in a few years now at least."

"No. I haven't I suppose."

"So, what did you dream?"

"It was... a strange sort of dream..." Soundwave said, slowly and thoughtfully. His optics narrowed a little and he stared ahead slightly, distracted while he appeared to try hard to find words for things that existed instead only as images and ideas. "It was not a memory this time, or something I might have wished could really have been as a youngling. She spoke me this time from somewhere in space... it felt like now instead of sometime centuries ago. She sent me coordinates... I sent her data files. She asked me send a bridge... I told her I would. She said things that made no real sense to me. Something... something about a blast. Something about light..."

Firestorm just sat still on the ridge, nodding and hoping he might explain more. But clearly there was little more to explain at all. And even when he was done, he just stayed silent for a moment longer, shaking his head a little in obvious confusion over the dream he had just tried to relay.

"You were... up in the night," he said a moment later, changing the subject and looking at her now with worry on his face-plate.

"I didn't mean to woken you up," Firestorm replied, knowing well how easy it had always been to do so. "I... I just couldn't seem to recharge well so I got up for a bit."

She didn't want to tell him the whole truth – that she had been up twice in the night purging her fuel tank. He would only worry without much obvious need, for her health, when she easily assumed it might simply have been some slightly stale energon she'd drank at her paint shop – having left it out a bit too long. And anyway she'd felt just fine by morning, and was still just as fine now.

* * *

Ratchet, despite the cranky and so often almost standoffish, attitude he still tried sometimes too hard to portray, did truly care for every member of the Autobot team. Every one of them was valued like a creation or grand-creation he'd never had. And he knew they all knew it well, regardless of his shouting at them all to get out of his way when he was busy working, or his sometimes too harsh criticisms of their taste in music and entertainment. As the years slowly began to leave the war behind them all, he'd found the time to understand just how proud he truly was of everything each one of them had become.

There were bond-mates and devoted partners, younglings and promotions. Everyone of them had dreams to peruse, and every one of them was trying for them – each one still working to build a life they'd never really had the chance to have before, on the still fast changing world.

Bumblebee ran the simpler of medical cases on his own by now, and he held top rank among all fifteen of the medical students now in training at once. And his wonderful mate had come to nearly dominate field entirely when it came to mechanics and engineering. All this, Ratchet reflected with a silent chuckle, done so far with four younglings to raise by now a much wanted fifth one on the way.

Smokescreen was standing champion in the 'masters' class on the racetrack. He had fans now, mostly youngling bots, who recognized him easily in the street for his racing skill and his latest win. Wheeljack owned and ran an energon bar, which had fast ranked among the top three in the city. And he still refused - despite the number of bots that had clearly loved him during their too brief affairs thought the years – to settle down with any one of them.

There was Arcee, with her wonderful youngling daughter, who would clearly be beating off too flirtatious hopefuls with a tire iron someday. And Bulkhead, whose life was so clearly devoted entirely to his own daughter's happiness – and it didn't matter for scrap that she wasn't always his. And...

"Ratchet," Knockout exclaimed pulling the old bot at once from thoughts that had so obviously wandered away from him, against his will.

He looked around the marketplace- relatively quiet at that time of mid-morning - from his place close to the edge of the refreshment area at it's centre, And he mumbled a simple apology, to his fellow medic, who sat across from him at the small metal table, forcing away his strange distractedness quickly.

"You were... saying something about some problematic medical equipment..." Ratchet mumbled. He looked his teammate in the optics to show he was indeed fully paying attention again. And he saw Knockout nod slightly.

"The primary wiring systems connectivity tester," he explained, seriously. "The same one that's been glitching for years... I do believe it's finally given up and finished."

The small machine that Knockout spoke of, was certainly not nearly as needed in day to day medical practice as an energon pressure monitor or a med scanner. But nonetheless, the device – used to measure impulses through limbs and digits from the processors of bots – was a very important piece of equipment. And at least a few known younglings in the city still required regular testing. Ratchet immediately frowned.

"Send it down to Speedbreaker later today," he advised, well aware that she could surely fashion parts and improvise is she needed to in order to give the old thing another year or two at least. And the hospital still lacked funding just as badly as ever to replace such a technical piece of equipment if it could be saved. "If she can't make it work somehow, the thing is truly doomed to the parts bin."

Knockout nodded, smiling half absently now in the direction of his mate, who stood nearby , at the edge of the closest market stall, rummaging trough a bin of finely embroidered throw pillows, in any and all possible colours. For a moment she held up blue one, turning it to view it's design under the lights above. And she must have decided against it, because she set it nicely back down at the top of the bin. She inspected a greyish one next, one that shimmered a little in the light because of its metallic threads. This one she was so clearly undecided about, because she almost put it down, before she picked it up again and looked at it again in the lights, while she frowned.

Ratchet watched then, chuckling slightly with his amusement, as Arcee looked toward Knockout clearly asking his for his opinion with only her doubtful optics and a shrug of her shoulders while she held the pillow out in front of her and turned to him. Knockout, who Ratchet knew well from experience, had never much minded whatever his mate chose to pick out for their home, just shrugged back laughing.

Arcee must have finally decided against that one too, because she dropped it gently back into the bin with a shake of her head and a hint of a smile. And she stepped sideways then, rummaging now though a bin of smaller throw pillows instead. But she stopped her browsing a second after that. And for a long moment, she just stood, her hands on the edge of the thing, her body leaning froward and a sudden sad expression as she seemed to stare a pale blue pillow that she'd tuned up to the top of the pile.

"Is Arcee feeling alright?" Ratchet questioned, watching the bot now in question, with suddenly very concerned optics, from his place still seated in the refreshment area.

He didn't concern himself much with Arcee's health – or Cybershock's either for that matter. As much as his instincts told him constantly to concern himself with everyone all the same, they were the family of another perfectly capable and qualified medic. And Ratchet had learned quickly, through experience, that Knockout was always so clearly on top of it every time his mate or child fell ill or was injured. But he questioned it now, because he was close by, and of course he was concerned. And he saw Knockout nod a little, with obvious concern of his own.

"We... we made the decision together to stop trying for a second youngling," he explained, clearly saddened now himself. That much was perfectly obvious in his tone, although he didn't show it on his face-plate. Understandable of cause that he should be sad himself. He'd wanted a brand new first frame for years just as much as Arcee did. And Ratchet knew it without ever having needed to directly question him on that.

"I told her maybe we should try for just a little longer," knockout continued. He leaned over the table just a little, now talking in slightly hushed tones about a private matter in a place that was slowly filling with bots in hearing range. He sipped from the fuel container in front of him, held it absently in his hand for a while, clearly having simply forgot to set it back down. And he shook his head. "I reminded her of everything you've always said... that there's no real reason we can't..." he shook his head again, and finally set down his fuel. "But then there's the constant hoping that maybe this time we've done it, and the constant spark break of one negative scan after another. I understand why she says she just can't anymore. She... she says it might be for the best now anyway... That Cybershock is too old now to want a baby sibling for a playmate. But it's clear to me she still wants another one anyway. And Cybershock would have been so happy too... even if they'd have not a thing in common for years."

"I'll tell you what," Ratchet said slowly, considering as he carefully chose his words. He looked again at the bot who he loved like a daughter, now back to browsing in the bin with unshed tears in her optics. "I'll review your case again... look back over anything I have from both of you on file. If there's even one thing I might have missed..." he sighed smiling assurance, and took a drink from his own fuel container, finishing it. "I'll refrain from telling Arcee I'm still working on this – I don't exactly need to say a thing because you know it's legal and fine for a medic to review patient files... If there's a way for the two of you to make a newspark, I'll find it..."

Knockout looked at him for a long moment, doubtful. He was a medic too. And Ratchet knew well he must have reviewed every variable on his own, probably reaching the very same conclusion Ratchet had when asked... simple bad luck and no known and fixable problem. But Knockout was much younger than Ratchet was. He'd practised only a fraction as long as him, and he hadn't come nearly as close to seeing it all. The old bot smiled again, with what he hoped looked a little like confidence. And finally he watched his teammate nod a little.

"Thank you," Knockout said, with a grateful expression. And his tone said that he meant it entirely.

"May I... trust you with something in confidence, Knockout?" Ratchet dared to ask then. He leaned in even closer over the table, and strange he found himself looking around the marketplace carefully, just as thought on some level it mattered who among the crowd of strangers might hear him speaking.

"Uh... sure..." Knockout sounded confused and baffled. And Ratchet could hardly say he blamed him. But he just nodded his thanks and decided to settle back in his chair again, though he did still speak quietly.

"There is... a ship on its way here in within a day or two," he explained quickly. "A very small one this time. Under Autobot control..."

"So...?" Knockout still sounded confused. Again, impossible to blame him for that.

"I took the call from the craft myself last night," Ratchet started to explain. "The piloting bot is a..." he stopped speaking then, falling utterly silent at once, when his optics fell on Soundwave – strolling slowly through the marketplace with Firestorm beside him.

The pair clearly noticed Ratchet and Knockout themselves, because both nodded polite and simple greetings, before they paused a short distance away to talk to each other for a second or two. Finally Soundwave- his own skill and confidence at socializing completely by his own choice – wandered quickly over to the medics at their table. Firestorm, who had clearly noticed Arcee by the vendor's stall close by, ran the short distance to join her at once smiling bright as ever.

Soundwave sat down, with little hesitation at all in the chair ratchet offered him at once. And for a while he sat ideally chatting with the medi-bots. The discussion though slowly become more of one entirely between him and Knockout, while Ratchet's attention once again wandered away.

The old medic looked intently in the direction of Arcee and Firestorm, who now laughed and chattered away together as the browsed a rank of curtains folded over hangers on a long movable rail. Arcee looked happier now, clearly distracted pleasantly, by a good friend to shop with. But still she was sad. It was obvious. And Firestorm, smiling brightly as she was and nearly always seemed to do, appeared strangely run down and tired. Her head hung just slightly – not nearly enough that most non-medical bots would have noticed in the least, but enough that Ratchet did – and her optics were clouded just a little. She rested a hand against her middle, roughly where her fuel tank would fit behind it, just as were queasy, for a second. But that much of her trouble at least, seemed to pass quickly. Because she looked up again, smiling easily though the same slightly tiredness, to resume her casual chit-chat.

"Firestorm?" Ratchet finally managed to question her a short while later, once the two femmes had joined the group at the table, sitting in chairs that Knockout had easily jumped up to fetch for them from some table close by, and with a large package of purchases behind the knees of both of them. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Wonderful, thank you," Firestorm replied. And Ratchet feared for just a second that she was speaking in sarcasm, and felt fall worse in fact than she appeared. But she smiled just the same as ever, and nodded at him with a grateful grin. And he knew at once she truly did feel just fine.

"You've been getting enough fuel?" Knockout questioned her next, and boldly as ever. Clearly then he'd seen her troubles too, however minor and simple they may well have been. "Remember... a flyer bot needs up to twice as much as a grounder..." he paused then, shook his head a little and chuckled to himself, clearly understanding that he sounded annoyingly fretful over his 'sister-in-spark.' He still reminded her of such now truly obvious things, after enough years to know better, out of habit to do so.

"Yep," Firestorm answered him simply. And clearly just slightly less than amused.

"And no.." she said, before he could further question her on the question she must have guessed he was about to ask her next. "I have certainly not been pushing my engines to the brink."

The question, had the medic had the chance to ask it, might certainly have been a fair one. Firestorm, though she had certainly learned her lesson well by now, had certainly pushed herself once within her capabilities. Clearly determined to prove to anyone who doubted her that she could fly with the best of those bots born and raised to do so... just as though she'd never had a set of wheels at all.

"It's a legitimate concern!" Knockout said, laughing a little, in his own obvious defence, "You do have very some very impressive engine performance." He paused, once again in the middle of speaking. And this time he just smirked at her, before he added, mumbling with that same smirked, "well... impressive for a plane anyway."

Firestorm gave another glare then, though it was so clearly in good fun and humour. And she raised a hand, in a motion of pretending she might just throw something at him – save for the fact that her hand was empty. Knockout raised his hands in mock surrender, and Arcee, despite her earlier sadness obvious in her optics, chuckled cheerfully, smiling now. Soundwave, strange as it might have seemed once from him, laughed loudly at the nonsense.

"Well, I think I could certainly go for some powered iron cake," Ratchet declared. He wasn't much for sweets, and he never had been. But still any bot liked them from time to time and he knew the snack booth behind him and across the refreshment area made the best he'd managed to find so far on New Cybertron. So he looked around the table grinning a second before asking politely, "anyone want anything?"

"I better come with you," Knockout offered, laughing slightly, and getting to his feet, once they had a small collection of everyone's requests just large to be almost impossible for one bot to easily carry.

"Ratchet," Knockout said, speaking in whispers as the two moved away from their table, and toward the snack booth. He grabbed his arm gently to get his attention. And the old medic was hardly surprised. "What's this now about an incoming ship?" He frowned a little, his earlier confusion giving way to at least some obvious look of some understanding, as he looked back toward their table. "Just judging by how fast you stopped talking, it might have something to do with... Firestorm and Soundwave?"

Knockout could walk well enough in general, at least for a reasonable distance before he grew tired, still sooner than many bots would. Still, his balance was not exactly perfect, and his reaction times while standing were frequently lacking. And suddenly with no immediately clear and obvious cause, he stumbled forward, his hands flying forward to catch himself. But he couldn't quite fast enough. And just like that he landed on the floor, close to face-plate first on the metal tiles. His frustration and distress were clear in his optics as she struggled a little, while fluttered, to get to his knees.

"Knockout... these things happen..." Ratchet told him, his tone calm and hopefully assuring as he leaned to offer a hand up. He didn't bother to ask his teammate if he was okay, because it was clear he was, and hard falls, though far from common anymore, were certainly not new.

"That they do..." Knockout grumbled slightly, before he smiled again, proud and confident, looking around at the small crowd that had clearly noticed his tumble and mumbled among themselves – some in concern and, others in disdain while assuming he might have been wasted drunk, without a clue how impossible far he'd come.

He declined the hand Ratchet offered to help him back up, opting instead pull himself up by using an empty table beside him, with a look of a bot that utterly refused to be embarrassed. Still, he was less than pleased as ever, exchanging glances now with his mate, half standing up from her chair across the refreshment area, until she finally sat down at his wordless insistence.

"About that ship then," Ratchet said, right back the topic of discussion he'd been distracted from so abruptly, once he saw that Knockout was indeed clearly quite perfectly alright as usual. His red painted teammate in turn looked at him once again with interest. His steps had evened out again to a steady if not slightly slow pace. And when it came to that fall, he was clearly over it.

"The ship is piloted by an Autobot femme. It seems there are a couple of younglings on board – her own children. And her primary goal – understandably of course – is to get them to safety."

"Of course. But what does that..." Knockout's questioning was cut short when Ratchet held up a hand, pausing at the far edge of the refreshment area now, and close to the snack stand.

"I have decent reasons to think that Autobot pilot might be Soundwave's carrier," he explained quickly, his tone more hushed then before. He gently grabbed the red paint bot by the arm, holding his attention, as he explained more. "I'm due to meet the ship myself when it lands on Cybertron, and I'd like to ask you to go out there with me to do so. There was something said about a sick youngling... I want to be sure we got this right or wrong before Soundwave and Firestorm hear a thing."

Knockout, quite predictably just nodded, obviously agreeing to help.


	16. Chapter 16

Blastwave didn't say a thing about it. But Shortwave could tell in just a second of watching him, that he was almost too overwhelmed. He'd clearly been fearful and panicked, right alongside his amazement and obvious disbelief, from the second the family's small ship had landed on their world. And now, sitting on the edge of a medbay repair table, it was obvious to his carrier, even in his complete silence and stillness, that he was fast approaching terrified, as he stared at the med-scanner in the young medic's hand.

The medic, still a student, as he'd explained upon introducing himself just moments before, and whose name had been all but forgotten too quickly in the haze of brand new information, cracked some random joke with the youngling, obviously trying to make him laugh. But Blast' - raised all his life so far on a ship, and with no real grasp on culture or the modern world - simply didn't seem to grasp that he was even joking.

Shortwave, standing nearby – close to her tiny daughter as she was scanned far more slowly and carefully than Blast', while she lay still as ever and silent – looked up to smile assurance at her son.

"It's just a scanner, Blast'," Shortwave told the youngling, smiling to assure him as she took a step closer. "Not much different than the one on the ship." Because indeed it was nearly the same, save for the fact that the med student's scanner was obviously newer and far more high tech.

Ratchet, busy taking clearly detailed notes onto a data pad, exchanged curious and casual glanced with his red painted colleague, whose name had been just as quickly overlooked as the student's, while the red painted bot ran the scanner.

"Blast'?" Ratchet questioned, never having asked for the youngling's name yet at all, and now so clearly trying to casually deduce his from its short form. His optics left his notes for just a second, and he looked over the bigger youngling, who the medical student was now clearly trying to gently urge him to answer with a smile and motion of his hand.

"Blastwave," Shortwave told the old bot, when her youngling gave no answer for himself. And the medibot instantly chuckled.

"So then... that one would be..." he nodded with a light chuckle toward Shortwave's other youngling – who he was still busy working with.

"Lightwave!" Blast' exclaimed, the first he'd spoken at all since they'd landed. And he smiled now, grinning in his sister's direction, his unease about the scanner seemingly forgotten entirely.

"I... realized only while carrying her spark that I had a very clear pattern to continue..." Shortwave told the medic, chuckling a little.

"Cute..." the red painted bot muttered, smiling a little. He had started to attach tiny Lightwave to monitors now, and her optics began to blink fast – a try at communicating uncertainty over just how she felt about the idea.

"Is that so, little miss?" the red medi-bot said, calm and cheerful while he went on working. He paused in his work, and held a monitor cable in his hand, close to the optics, of the helpless youngling. His free hand gently held one of hers, and he worked to straighten her tiny bent fingers. He quite strangely appeared close to stumbling over his own right foot with his left one, as he took a small step backward and adjusted his footing. But it was a small thing really, barely noticable at all. And seemingly unbothered entirely, he just went right on. "You're just a bit nervous I bet because you have no idea what's happening, do you? I'm just going to attach this wire to your body armour... and then a few more of them. We can get readings that way on the machine right behind you."

Shortwave had so often wondered just how much Light' could understand. And she talked to her all the time, just as though it all made sense to her, sure at the very least she liked the attention somehow. Blast' did it too. Sometimes, she'd hear him chattering on to his sister for hours, telling her what he'd read on his datapads, and everything he saw on the view screens. The time he'd spend talking to her was by far the very most the youngling ever talked at all. But she'd always accepted that most bots were not her and her son. Most bots didn't bother talking to anyone like Lightwave. Sure, some likely did it to be funny, or friendly and polite. Or maybe they were curious what, if anything, might happen if they did. But this medic seemed to talk to her like that for the very same reason she and Blast' did – because Light' was a living bot too, and she just might have understood him.

"Her spark is weak," the medic said, clearly saddened by the readings he saw on the screen beside him. "Its function is perhaps thirty percent."

Shortwave nodded her own sad understanding while she watched her tiny helpless child so strangely begin to whir and buzz just a little at the medi-bot. Clearly she liked him. But his own machines only confirmed exactly what she'd never needed a machine to tell her at all. Light's spark was working for too hard just to keep up – Shortwave heard it clearly when she listened... she could see it just as clearly in the way the few simple almost meaningful movements the tiny bot could make, made her close to optics with a constant need for rest. And she knew before she'd decided to hurry for their home world, that she was only getting worse, and so quickly now.

She watched as the red painted medic gently sat Light' up on the repair table. And for a second she was about to hurry forward, to warn him in her worry, to please be careful because she couldn't support her own weight and had no sense of balance at all. But he instantly supported the tiny frame with a hand behind her the second her moved her. The other hand gently held her right shoulder panel, and he was moving her so slowly. Shortwave saw at once there was little need to worry. The youngling's head fell to one side, as she was barely able to support it on her own, and the medi-bot clearly noticed this quickly, because he shifted her around a little more, tipping her back just a little against the arm he held behind her, so that she could lean it back against his upper arm.

"Are... you done with me now, Sir?" Blastwave said, on his own repair table close by. And Shortwave turned away from her smaller child just in time to see the medical student who had been assessing her bigger one nod smiling, with a strange dismayed look on his face-plate. Shortwave chuckled just a little in amusement, understanding that this still very young student was clearly not used to anybot calling him 'sir.'

"Go on, Buddy," the student said, laughing a little as he lifted Blast quickly up from his place on the repair table, and plopped him gently down onto the floor, before he chuckled again just slightly, with clear discomfort over the formality.

Shortwave caught her son lightly in mid step, as he hurried toward her. She smiled down at him before her attention, (and his too just as clearly) went back to Lightwave. The red painted medic had lifted her up from the repair table. And for a moment he just stood holding her in his arms for little or no discernible medical reason at all. He bounced just a little, with his footing somehow just slightly off in a way that Shortwave could not quite place, before he just as strangely placed Light' onto the floor, holding her in the closest she could ever be to sitting position, while he held her hands in one of his in front of her and supported her from behind again with his other one. He moved again, sitting with her on the floor, and letting her lay in his lap, he carefully bent and unbent tiny joints. Again, Lightwave whirred a little, and buzzed at him.

"Light likes him," Shortwave muttered, both impressed and greatly surprised, as well as relieved. Lightwave could show fear – though just like any other feeling of hers, it was expressed through her optics and tiny whirs and buzzes and was very hard to distinguish. And her carrier had worried of course, quite troublingly, that she might have been unhappy.

"Knockout is our younglings' medic," Ratchet said, standing beside her. He gestured toward the red painted bot with a look in his optics that might have been something close to pride. "And I have yet to see a tiny bot he isn't somehow good with..."

"Her processor function is impossible to measure exactly without running more, detailed scans of her," the red painted bot said. He had sat Lightwave up now, on the floor in front of him. And he held her carefully, supporting her in that floppy seated position, to stop her falling while he appeared to assess her balance and strength – or all lack of either. He layed her back again, lifted her back onto his knees, and held a finger in front of her optics before moving it slowly. Light' barely followed it. "She can't be functioning at more then twenty percent however. Language files offline, fine motor skills completely non-existent, her inability to hold herself up is just as much a severe balance issue as it is lack of strength..."

"This is... by far the most profoundly damaged bot I've ever seen in my centuries of practice," Ratchet muttered, nodding his head with a sad look on his face-plate.

And Shortwave, standing close by, just lowered her head understanding the implications at once. She knew it had to be every bit as bad as she'd feared and possibly worse, if a medi-bot who'd practised as long as that one clearly had seen nothing worse.

########

Shortwave sat watching out the window, while Blast' busied himself in the courtyard outside, running around with a bent metal bar he must have found somewhere – waving it around, aiming it at the air and probably pretending to shoot invisible targets just as through the bar was a blaster. She laughed a little, dismayed, trying hard to fight back the unease that had been running through her mind since her family had landed on Cybertron the previous morning.

She held Light' tighter against her, still sitting slumped and floppy as ever in her lap. And slowly she stood up, careful as ever to support the weight of her child, holding her close to the window, letting her look out. She heard a tiny whirring buzz from the youngling. It might have been excitement, but it was so hard to tell. Blastwave, strangely, had always been far better at knowing exactly what his sister was thinking than even she, her carrier was.

"Good afternoon," the voice - from a bot behind her when she had never noticed the sound of footsteps approaching at all – made her nearly jump clean out of her body armour.

"I... I'm sorry," the bot said when she turned around quickly to face him. The red and white medic she'd met the day before, upon landing. Ratchet. She recalled his name almost too slowly.

"Not your fault," Shortwave told him, allowing herself to laugh a little. She held her child tighter, and and considered for a second. "I'm usually not nearly this jumpy..."

"You'll feel better after some good recharge tonight," The medi-bot smiled. "Has anyone had a chance to show you your living space yet?"

Shortwave just nodded gratefully, because indeed she had seen it briefly, and it was surprisingly much nicer then she would ever have expected it to be. A pair of soft padded recharge stations for her younglings took up a good amount of the space inside and each of them was made up with light blue covers and soft pillows plus a few spare. But there was also a holo-vid player for them all to use, set up in a corner with a small viewing screen above, and a small stack of assorted discs on a shelf nearby. There was an armchair, and data pads, and light blue curtains that blew in the breeze through a large window that could be opened and closed as they wanted. She had been showed the room not long by the medical student whose name she never could seem to remember. And she was sure Blast' would like it too.

"The room is lovely, thank you" she said, sure that someone from among the Autobot team she had yet to meet had gone well above and beyond just to rearrange a room and make it nice for them. "Still, I fear I may not recharge much tonight..."

"Understandable," the medi-bot said, an easy smile on his face-plate. He stepped closer to the window himself and looked out for a moment before turning back to Shortwave again. "You're on a brand new world. What's not to be near panic inducing in that?"

"Cybertron is my world," Shortwave argued. "It's my home."

She remembered her youngling-hood so clearly... a youngling-hood on the world she stood on now. And in her memories it was just as good as any childhood could have been for a small femmling born to be a slave. But the medic shook his head a little, and this made her stare it him, suddenly growing frustrated.

"This is nothing like the world you left," Ratchet said, calm and smiling. He smiled a little, in a way that was clearly meant to simply be causal and even friendly. "It can't be. We are only decades out of the war and the place is changing far too fast for anything to seem familiar."

"Not to mention, I'm across the world now from where I grew up... " Shortwave mused, chuckling a little, before she paused, questioning even that knowledge in her growing, and frustrating confusion. "I think..."

"Where is Kaon from here?" she asked a moment later, laughing a little again before she stopped suddenly, remembering that the place she spoke of was now probably just pile of rubble and wreckage the size of a once huge city. And for the first time – now that she was back on her world – that truly disturbed her.

"Well... the ruins of it anyway," she added, chuckling lightly to hide her sadness, and deciding she may as well just say it out loud.

"Clear across the planet," the medi-bot said, confirming her best guess. And he stood still for a good long moment just shaking his head before he muttered, sadly himself, "And yes, it's little more then rubble now. There's been little interest in any restoration of the place, and even a good bit of direct opposition to it. I see where bots are coming from, given what the city came to represent. But still... there's so much history there and and lose it all forever would be a crying shame "

"For so long, my goal was just to get here," Shortwave mused, smiling down at Lightwave in her arms. "Get back to Cybertron, now that I could... and I never really thought much beyond that..."

"And now that you're here you wonder what's next?" the medic guessed easily. And Shortwave nodded.

"Pretty much," she chuckled again, uneasily. "Starting over again among the refugees... I... I've never liked unknowns very much."

"You'll get a housing placement as soon as one is open for you," Ratchet said. "You'll be given work. You can be happy here."

"Is it okay that he's out there?" Shortwave looked at Blast' again through the window, windering is she was right to have become concerned. "He wanted to explore a little on his own..." She stopped speaking again. But the old bot just chuckled, nodding.

"Younglings play out there all the time. He's hardly the first."

Lightwave was not exactly big for her age, nor was she as heavy as she should have been. But still, she was heavy enough, and her legs hang awkwardly over her carrier's arms while she was held. Shortwave slowly sat down with her on a bench with her back to the window. And she looked down at the child, laying with her optics barely open as typical, over her knees.

"May I give her a gift?" Ratchet asked suddenly, and grinned again. And Shortwave, startled and just slightly confused nodded a little.

She smiled though when the old bot took a soft stuffed toy cyberhound – one with exaggerated and 'cute' features and oversized floppy audial receptors, and made of bright emerald green fabric - from his storage compartment. She smiled even more when Lightwave's optics opened wide again at least for a moment, so that she could look just as intently as she could manage, at the cute stuffed thing, before she gave a little whir of clear interest. Lightwave could not hold the toy of course. She had never been even close to capable of holding an object. But Shortwave took it carefully from the medic anyway, and set it on her child's chest panel while she held her laying on her lap. And finally she moved her youngling's hand, letting it rest on the toy, letting her sense the soft fluffiness of it. Light' whirred quietly again. And she might just have grinned if she could have.

"Knockout brought that back for her right before I came to find you here," Ratchet explained, smiling with obvious joy at watching the damaged child interact the best she could with the toy. "He needed to get back to work, but he insisted I give it to her for him."

"Tell him thank you from us both," Shortwave said, once again moved by the kindness of these bots who did not need to be understanding but clearly tried to be anyway.

She wanted to ask him then how long her last child might live. Now that she had finally gotten her family home, she wanted to know if her last child might ever grow up – whatever growing up could mean for a helpless bot like Lightwave. But she knew she never would. And she didn't need a medic to tell her that. Even if he had some answer for her, which she didn't need to ask to knew he couldn't possibly have, it would only be an approximation anyway. And Shortwave was not entirely sure she'd want to know for sure, even if he could somehow tell her the answer with any true certainty.

The medi-bot sat down beside her on the bench, and with a silent motion of his hands, he asked, wordlessly to hold the youngling for a moment. Her took her gently from her carrier's lap, and set her down half sitting, on his own. And promptly he rested her new stuffed toy on her chest panel again. Her head tilted to the side to lean on his upper arm, and he just sat, supporting her helpless frame, smiling down and her, and grinning when her optics lit up in response. He looked up again then, his expression serious and sad.

Shortwave stood up from the bench again, and turned to the window, watching her son, still outside in the courtyard. Other younglings had joined Blast' out there now. A small yellow painted boy with bright chrome highlights, along with two girls – a head to foot pale green one, and another painted bright red and pale blue with brilliant purplish patterns on her upper limbs. The three chattered away to each other in the middle of the courtyard, their hands flying around cheerfully as they all suddenly began to laugh, possibly, it seemed, at something the green one had said. The three all stopped, the attention turning suddenly to the brightly coloured little femmling, who immediately set off running across the courtyard a bright smile on her face-plate as she tumbled, her lower body up over her hands, upside down and quickly right side up again, her body springing forward as she flipped over and over until she nearly hit a bench beside the walkway, and she turned around grinning.

"Light' lived to see Cybertron," Shortwave mused, that knowledge just enough to make inevitably losing her one day much easier. "I know there's no measure of her level of awareness, no way to know just how much she really understands. But this is home to her too, and I like to think she knows she's really here."

She laughed then just a little, remembering how Blast' had taken Lightwave from her arms carefully just moments after they'd landed and disembarked from their ship that morning. He'd set her down on the cool metal ground outside the city, amid the rubble still awaiting clean up, and the large chucks of sulphur that littered the ground. And he'd held her up, slumping forward on useless knee and ankle joints, while he held her tightly just as though she was really standing by herself. Only fair, he'd explained with a rare bright smile on his normally sombre face-plate, that she should stand on Cybertron's ground at least once with the rest of them.

Shortwave watched the younglings outside the window again. Saw the little yellow bot manage a decent forward flip just like his playmate had done. But he stopped at just one, then flipped upside down again to stand for a good moment on his hands, while both small girls laughed and cheered him on. She watched then as he flipped back over easily onto his feet again and the three resumed their chatting, as one by one they flopped down onto the ground fitting themselves into a tight circle of small laughing bots. Blastwave still stood alone across the courtyard, with that metal bar he'd been playing with now held tight and nervously in his hands, and the pale blue and red youngling, looking at him over he heads of her two friends, smiled brightly in his direction, until he lowered his optics with a shy hint of a smile of his own.

Ratchet joined her at the window then, Lightwave still in his arms and motionless with her optics dim. And with a laughing smile across his face-plate he pointed out and named each of the three younglings, with clear fondness in his voice. There was Hotwire – the son of the medical student she'd already met. Switchgear – who's creator it seemed she still had yet to meet. And Cybershock – the daughter of the younglings' medic who had been so good to both of her children. Shortwave smiled then, trying to commit the names to memory along with the growing list she was acquiring. But slowly she began to frown a little instead.

"Those younglings must be near enough to Lightwave's age..." she mumbled sadly.

She didn't let herself think much about what Light 'could have been. But she thought about it then, just watching those little bots as they began to run and tumble around again on the metal ground outside. And she wondered if Light' could know that she was one of them.

"You said on that comm-call you made to base while en-route, that you had some urgent information for us," Ratchet said, changing the subject abruptly. And Shortwave was instantly glad of it somehow.

She took a fast intake, reminded at once of her duty. And for just a moment she wondered if a medical officer – now that she'd discovered it was indeed a medic she'd been talking to over comms in the first place, was the best bot to rely the account of her encounter in space to at all. But he'd now asked her directly, he certainly outranked her, and it was easy to guess his role among that HQ team extended to much more than medical matters. She'd already deduced easily that the team may well have been surprisingly small.

And so she told this old red and white bot everything . The attack on her ship. The the hits to her shields and the string of ignored comm-calls to an enemy she tried hard to reason with, and how said enemy had only laughed when he'd finally accepted her flagging him, unconcerned over her younglings on board. And she told him what the 'con had said to her, when he'd thrown her civil warning of peacetime violations out the window. Finally done explaining it all just as fast as she could, while he just stood listening, nodding patiently at her with her youngling still content in his arms, she allowed herself a second to cringe as the true seriousness of what she'd just relayed hit home for her.

"A new master?" the old medi-bot muttered under his intakes, repeating what he'd just heard her say. He stood up straighter then, his expression one of purely business as he asked her, "did, this scavenger 'con mention a name for this 'new master' of his?"

Shortwave only shook her head, regretful, before she replied slowly, "he didn't say. I... asked him to explain himself. But he cut the call and fired on my ship again instead."

"I will be discussing this with the team as you can imagine." Ratchet answered, nodding understanding. And to her relief, he appeared to take her entirely seriously. But he smiled again, however wiry it may have been this time, and reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder panel, just as though she was a valued part of his own team.

"No doubt they will want to talk to you about this themselves. I'd advice you to go ahead and prepare a report," he continued, his tone one of calm assurance. "Meanwhile focus on just settling in here. Take some time to get to know Cybertron again."

"Thank you," Shortwave said, her own smile hesitant but no less sincere. "For everything..."

"Today has been quite a day for you already," Ratchet answered her, before he chuckled a knowing chuckle. "Again, perfectly understandable of course. The first few days are almost always a bit overwhelming for the new arrivals... but I have some news I need to share with you, and I think you'll want to hear it."

The medic motioned with his hand, inviting her to sit beside him again on the bench. And when she did so, however slowly and more hesitant than ever, he handed the youngling back to her, placing the heavy child easily into her waiting arms, for her to hold tightly while she stared at him with growing dread at his now serious expression.

"Your son is alive," he said, his voice entirely serious. And Shortwave, confused, looked immediately back toward the window, half way to standing again in order to do so.

The red and pale blue youngling, Cybershock, had broken away from her pair of friends now. And she was walking slowly toward Blast' with her bright smile, and a hand extended in friendly greeting. Blastwave certainly appeared unsure now. But he stood still, looking right at her, and finally smiling just a little in return.

"Of course he is..." she began to say, stupidly. But the old medi-bot shock his head to stop her train of thought at once. And his face-plate was more serious than ever.

"Your other son," he said slowly. "Your first youngling..."

"S... Sound...wave...?" Shortwave's reply was weak and stammering, shaky and emotional and she feared it only made her sound pathetic then. But the medic just nodded, smiling.

Shortwave opened her mouth at once to speak again. But she closed it a good moment later, when she realized she had no idea what she wanted to say. Blast' was always the one with the hope of such a possibility. But she herself hadn't dared to hope, because any chance at all had seemed so small and it knew it. To learn at last and for sure that he was offline and had been for centuries – that she could have lived with. That she'd been prepared because because she'd simply assumed that was what was. Everything about the near impossible life she'd made for herself since the day she'd last seen him, she done it for the youngling who never quite got to grow up and who she'd known would have wanted her to be all she could be... the youngling who believed she was something amazing when the rest of decent society saw only an interface slave with no regard for her place. And now, just the idea that she could soon talk to him again, that he had somehow survived all those years...

"He's made a life for himself," the medic said, smiling again. "A decent life. He tries so hard, just like the rest of us... And he's happy."

Shortwave knew at once, before she was asked, just how much she wanted to see Soundwave again. She imagined for a second that perhaps this bot could give her his address – that she would rush on outside at once, snatch up Blastwave gently by the arm and run with him down the street of this new city, explaining on the way why they were rushing, and that he'd been right in his innocent daring to hope. But it just didn't work that way and she knew it. Soundwave would be a near stranger to her now. She couldn't ring his buzzer with an armload of his siblings he'd learn only then existed at all, and expect he'd wave them on in laughing.

She'd failed to protect him... failed to keep them together, and it didn't seem to matter all of a sudden, that it hadn't been her fault. He would be justified now, after endless years, in hating her now. And she wondered if he'd even want to meet her again. She thought maybe she couldn't blame him if he didn't. She looked at Lightwave, now back snug in her arms, and then at Blastwave outside the window – the red and pale blue youngling was talking to him by now, chattering away doing most if not all the talking, while Blast' just nodded, smiling shyly as before. Shortwave thought then, now that she needed to really think of it at all, that maybe she didn't need her first youngling anymore. She wanted to see him again, to talk to him, to catch up on centuries and to see with her own optics just how he had turned out. But need him, like she'd thought she did long after she'd lost him to fate? That was wasn't sure of anymore. She had a new family now, younglings who she loved just as much as she'd loved him. And surely he didn't need her either. Not if he'd managed to survive a war and build a life without her help.

"Soundwave knows you're here," the medi-bot said, pulling out of her thoughts again with his suddenly excited tone. "I comm'd him not long ago to tell him, and he wanted to drop what he was doing and hurry right over here to see you at once. He would have too if I hadn't reminded him that you might need time... But he wants to see you. He told me he'll be ready and waiting for you any time." The old medi-bot paused again, watching the younglings outside before he went on speaking. "His face-plate was once all but destroyed. The medical team... we were able to rebuild it... let him look quite like anyone else. But there was little hope of fully restoring his natural features entirely. I only explain all this so you won't be shocked to find a creation that doesn't look quite like the one you must remember all too well..."

Shortwave was about to reply. But she didn't know what to say. She wanted to say it didn't matter, but of course the old bot knew that. And then she wanted to ask what had happened to cause such damages, and just how bad it had been. But it wasn't that old bot's story to tell, and she knew he couldn't. So she just nodded mutely. And was greatly surprised when the old medi-bot spoke up again, grinning now.

"Firestorm is so excited too," he said laughing. And he continued on with his train of thought at once instead of ever explaining who this 'Firestorm' actually was in the first place. "I heard her burst out crying in the background right over the comm-link. And not the sad short of crying I can tell you! You'll meet her too soon. And of course you'll probably love her. She's amazing..."

* * *

The briefing room was, among a few other places, all that was left of the old Autobot base that could truly still be considered military in nature and function. And Ratchet found the plain and mostly empty room, just as unpleasant now as he always had while in the midst of war. He leaned forward in his hard backed and decidedly uncomfortable chair and took an intake, looking around at the gathered members of the lead Autobot team, uneasily. He did not like to feel uneasy, did not like that throb of tension that was steadily building in his processor and had been since that afternoon.

"It seems to me the information she had for us, however limited, was the best she had," he said, sighing loudly. "Still, I fear this potentially be very serious."

"I'll say it's serious." Bulkhead, sitting across the table slammed a hand onto it with just enough force to make the thing shake above the knees of the gathered bots. "Who's this 'new master' of theirs?"

"Shortwave never heard his name, Bulk'" Arcee reminded him, visibly concerned right though her calm expression. It was her who had interviewed the new arrival late that afternoon, hearing her relate her story and taking notes that were just as detailed as she could get with such little information.

"It's still completely possible that 'con scavenger was lying," Bumblebee said. And course he had a fair and valid point, which Ratchet found himself nodding agreement with at once. "It stands to reason that once he realized he was up against a ship containing only one lone low ranked Autobot and a couple of younglings, he decided it might be fun to be a bully and scare her."

"Or maybe this Shortwave is lying," Wheeljack said. He looked around the table with strange disdain on his face-plate. "I don't know her from a hole in the wall. None of us do. But we know she comes from Koan... she's never denied the fact. We have no reason at all to trust that this isn't all some trick..."

"We can't judge a bot for the city she came from," Smokescreen said from his own chair across from him. He sat still and silent for a good moment, and just looked flustered. "When have we ever called it okay to do something like that?"

"When they happen to come from the very home of Megatron's uprising," Wheeljack answered, his tone growing just slightly heated. "One look at her service record and I can see she's virtually nobody among the ranks. No recognized honours... never been promoted..."

"We can't all be wreckers and elite guard bots," Ratchet said, growing just a little heated himself. He may not have Known Shortwave any more than any others did. But he'd talked to her in his medbay. He'd seen her nervous uncertain optics, just as clearly as he'd seen the same on so many bots with no idea what would become of them on new Cybertron. He liked and felt protective of her younglings. "That very same service record will tell you she was a navigator. That may not be the most glamorous job among our ranks, but it's just as valid and valuable as any position... including a field medic."

"A service record we failed to find until yesterday..." Wheeljack argued, clearly determined to push his point, despite the glares more and more of the team were beginning to give him from their various places around the table.

"A service record we failed to find because it was filed as that of a bot of unknown designation who was presumed offline!" Arcee snapped, suddenly growing truly angry. Knockout, in the chair beside hers, visibly cringed where he might usually have simply smirked over such a thing. "A misfiled record just like a thousand others!"

"There was a time you would have been just as quick to question her as I..." Wheeljack protested. He finally lowered his optics a little, as she glared daggers at him. And finally, not a second later, he simply shut his mouth, clearly seeing the wisdom in that action.

"Keep it up with your so called 'logic' right to Knockout's face-plate and see if I don't send you flying," Arcee grumbled, half way to standing up, still glaring and her hands now in fists over the top of the table – suddenly the feisty quick tempered bot she'd been in wartime. "Say all that to Soundwave's and see how long it takes Firestorm to clobber you."

"Arcee..." Ratchet stood up, arms extended between the pair of arguing bots, and his head shaking just a little in dismay. But Knockout grabbed his bond-mate gently by the shoulder panels, pulling her lightly backward until she sat down again.

"I'm sorry," Arcee mumbled, shaking her head with a look of sincere apology. She looked around at her gathered teammates, before she took a slow intake to calm herself. She had been on edge lately, prone to upset. And it was all to obvious now as she just sat, for a moment with dismay in her optics before a looked of forced calm replaced it.

"Wheeljack has a point," she said, her tone even now as she looked at said bot. "But... I spoke with Shortwave myself. I interviewed her carefully, as well as reviewing her service record and Ratchet's notes. I have no reason to think she's lying. Her story never changed once. She just wants her younglings safe. Her smallest one is so clearly damaged... Still, right along with her motivation to seek medical care for a youngling that's quite possibly dying, she did her Autobot duty in warning us of a potentially serious situation."

"So... what do we do now?" Smokescreen asked. It was admittedly, a very good question. And the others exchanged looks while most shook their heads, each of then not entirely sure.

"We can't exactly just wait for a new 'con defector and ask him what he knows," Bulkhead grumbled. "We haven't had any new defectors in almost ten years."

"We haven't had any because their faction is finished," Arcee grumbled right back. "Or... at least it was supposed to have been, before it somehow decided to possibly regroup."

"I say we go after these so called scavengers," Bumblebee said, firmly and clearly serious. "We gather a team of volunteers, grab a ship and go on a 'con hunt around the area Shortwave ran into them the first time. Hopefully we're lucky enough to have a run in of our own, and then we capture their ship drag them home to see how fast we can make them talk."

"Talking prisoners was never ideal even in wartime," Ratchet said, shaking his head a little, even as he admitted reluctantly to himself that the logic of his young teammate was sound. "Now, during what's officially still considered peacetime, I'm hardly sure it could even be called ethical."

"They committed an act of war when they continued to fire on a ship after they'd been informed it contained innocent younglings," Arcee countered, frowning and serious. "'Bee is right. I say we catch us a couple of 'cons and see how quick they are to start talking."

Around the table most of the others all began to nod, and murmur, while a couple of them quite pointedly slammed their fists together.

"If it's all the same to all of you, I'd like to be the first to volunteer for this little hunting trip," Arcee said a moment later, and over the sounds of the teams continued murmurs. And from his place right beside her, Knockout cast her a concerned look.

"You're an early education teacher who's been away from active duty for close to a decade and a half," he protested. And Ratchet, watching him across the table, would have been hard pressed to miss the look of clear conflict on his face-plate – a bot trying hard just to protect his beloved mate and the carrier of his equally beloved creation, all without igniting her anger in the very same moment, and quite possibly spending a night recharging on their living room sofa.

"Yes..." Arcee said. And she appeared to choose her words very carefully, before she instantly stood up "I'm an early education teacher to a small group of tiny younglings who all deserve to grow up here in the peace we promised them. I'm the carrier to a child who deserves exactly the same. Along with her friends. I may have been out for years, but that doesn't mean I can't do this. And I am doing this..."

Knockout just smiled at that.

"You're gonna a bot with a decent ship and piloting skills," Wheeljack said, looking around slowly at the gathered group. He stood up too. "Count me in."

"Arcee is right about the younglings," Bumblebee added. "And I'd be a bot not worthy of the title of creator if I won't personally assure the peace and safely of my own."

'Bee stood up, in his own indication of volunteership. But he did so with a kind of clear hesitation where once he would have been the first to stand without question. His life though was different now. He had a bond-mate And together they had four younglings already. There was a fifth one on the way, and that one due in less than a month.

"I'm far from a medi-bot still," 'Bee said. And he shrugged just a little in a show of his old wartime confidence. "But I do fully believe my field skills are enough to keep anyone alive if things turn terrible."

"I... appreciate the confidence Bumblebee," said Ratchet, standing up quickly and without even a question over the sense of lack there of if in what he was doing. "That go get'em attitude will do some real good in the medbay... where will you will continue to work and study under Ambulon and Knockout while I'm away on this mission instead."

"Ratchet... I can do this..." the young bot started to protest. But Ratchet cut him off quickly with a firm wave of his hand.

"No bot in this room doubts it for a second," he said kindly. "This mission, if all goes to plan, should be safe work compared to the truly dangerous situations in which we've all seen you take the lead. But you have a baby at home, soon to be two of them and three second frames who all need your more than duty ever will." he looked across the table then, glaring for a moment at Arcee, not the least bit surprised to see her glaring right back.

"Sit yourself down, Arcee," he said firmly, though not without a tiny hint of a laugh. "You're not going either. Cybershock would never let us send you."

Knockout did not even move to stand, though Ratchet – recalling the never quite forgotten rank breaking stunt he'd pulled years before with the wreckers to rescue Miko while he was still far from even able to walk – knew instantly that the red painted medic would have stood up instantly had he not been glaring at him. Bulkhead however did move to stand, slowly, just as though he thought somehow the old medi-bot (and the one who had clearly assumed lead on the job of coordinating volunteers) might not have noticed him do it.

"You're not going either," Ratchet said, firm as ever, moved by the team's constant courage, and decidedly growing just slightly frustrate. He glared at Bulkhead, not because he might have needed it exactly, but because he could, and let himself chuckle silently to himself in victory when the big green bot sheepishly sat down. "You're the only parent Switchgear has. If you think I'd let you go out there, only to explain to her later why I let you go..."

"I guess that leaves me." Smokescreen chuckled a little as he stood up. But he nodded at his teammates when he had, clearly more than willing to volunteer.

* * *

"This sure is a big building, Carrier," Blastwave said clearly slightly uneasy He paused in the main floor atrium of 'building One, and glanced with a clearly uneasy look down the corridors that stretched out in two opposing directions with countless doors on either side. Finally his optics moved toward the elevator right in front of where he stood, and he stared intently, appearing to read floor numbers the reached into the sixties.

"That it certainly is, Blast'" Shortwave chuckled beside him, before she smiled assurance and lead him toward that elevator.

She pushed Lightwave in front of her, strapped snugly into a youngling sized wheelchair that the medical team had adapted for her with padded shoulder harnesses and a decent support for her head to rest against for comfort while in a just slightly reclined position. Shortwave had had her doubts about the thing from the second she'd seen it, and she still did. She'd carried Lightwave from place to place herself, despite the fact that she certainly was too heavy for that by now. And she could hardly imagine doing otherwise. But the contraption was already proving helpful on her first try at moving her anywhere significant outside the confines of a small spacecraft. And Lightwave did not appear to dislike the thing. Shortwave admitted to herself finally that the team may just have been right when they'd said Light' may just have preferred to be pushed then carried because it was far more comfortable to ride like this.

The elevator's doors slid open then the family approached. And Shortwave, with some doubt and a little help from Blast', pulled Light' inside and managed to park her between them facing toward the back wall. She set the elevator control for the forty-second floor and smiled a little, leaning back against the wall beside her increasingly anxious son.

"Does... Soundwave know about us, Carrier?" Blast questioned. His voice was quiet now, barely more than a whisper. And he glanced around the elevator as it rattled a little, as though he feared the cable might just break. "Me and Light' I mean..."

"You are both going to be a good surprise for him," Shortwave said back, hesitant now and questioning her decision to visit her long lost first creation while he still had no idea his siblings existed.

But then, she questioned herself shakily as she leaned against the wall, what else could she really have done? What should she have done? Everything was happening so fast. And it had been centuries since they had lost each other. Surely, she reasoned, he would assume – however sad he may have been to do so – that she'd had more children.

"He is waiting upstairs... in his apartment," Shortwave said speaking out loud to Blast' because she was too excited and nervous... and suddenly so strangely guilt sick, to keep it all to herself. "Himself and Firestorm."

"Who is Firestorm?" Blast' questioned, clearly confused. And Shortwave shook her head, unsure because she never had been told that herself even then.

The elevator came to a stop again, after a ride that had seemed far too long. And she hurried off, pulling her small youngling's chair out behind her. Confused by the hallway, just as big as it was, she headed to the left only hoping she was correct. And when she found quickly by the series of increasing unit numbers on the doors, she stopped halfway to the one she was looking for, to wipe – quite uncharacteristically fretting – at a scuff mark across Blast's shoulder panel. She did the same for Lightwave' despite the fact that Light' could not possibly had become scuffed to begin with. And instantly her attention was back on Blast' and wiping this time at an almost nonexistent scratch on the paint of his left wing tip.

"Carrier," Blast' protested. And he was a youngling who never seemed to protest.

"let's go..." Shortwave said, shaking her head a little in disbelief at herself, and trying hard to shove away her own unease.

The small family reached the door of 4214 in just another quick moment. And Shortwave paused in front of it, just staring at the bright chrome numbers on the door until the began to swim a little in her field of vision. And for a long moment she all but forgot how to press a buzzer button – or do anything else for that matter, aside from just blankly staring.

Blast' pressed it instead. And Shortwave snapped out of her terrible daze when the resounding low buzzing sound reached her from inside the apartment. Footsteps echoed somewhere inside, moving slowly toward the door And she felt for a second like she might fall over from her overwhelming emotions.

"...Carrier?" a voice said out of what seemed like nowhere. And she understood only then that the door had slid open.

She looked up then into the optics of her youngling – her first child, who she had lost so long ago they should perhaps have barely recognized each other at all. But she did recognize him. How could she not – she knew she'd have known him from a city block away. Though he was not exactly a youngling anymore.

"You're... alive..." Shortwave muttered, stupidly at him because it was the only thing her suddenly near useless processor could manage to put together for coherent language. "You were still alive... all this time..."

"These are your brother and your sister," she continued on a good moment later, making herself form words when Soundwave said nothing and simply stared at her thoughtfully, reminding her every bit of the youngling he'd been when she'd last seen him.

"...Siblings?" Soundwave said, quiet and so clearly near disbelieving. He stared down at the two youngling bots with his carrier, red optics blinking and a tiny hint of a smile on his face-plate. "I have a... brother? A sister?"

"Blastwave here reminds me so much of you." Shortwave rested a hand on Blast's shoulder panel, smiling a little when he smiled, however nervous he still so clearly was. "And Lightwave... well she's complicated. But she's still so lovely. She'd let you hold her if you want to..."

"Come... inside," Soundwave invited, clearly realizing for the first time that they were all indeed still conversing, quite strangely, in his doorway.

Shortwave followed him, pushing Light's chair with Blast' close beside her, into a tiny though well decorated apartment. They took offered seats on the overstuffed pale blue sofa that barely fit tight again a living room wall, and shortwave glanced around at the well matched blue fringed curtains over the narrow patio window and the many incidental while shelves of so many things mounted on the walls by their clean sliver brackets. Light sat parked by that narrow glass door, buzzing once before she closed her optics. And Blast just looked around, silent, and so clearly insure what he was supposed to say to a bot he'd always known only from his carrier's fond stories.

"Carrier talks about you all the time," Blast' said slowly. He smiled shyly up at Soundwave, who had sat himself down, in a simple black framed chair, which he'd pulled out from the little table in the other corner of the room. "All my life she'd tell these wonderful stories... I... feel like I almost know you already, kind of."

Soundwave only smiled at that. But his smile was bright, and so clearly moved at how how he'd never been forgotten. And Shortwave smiled too, lacking any words of her own that might have sounded even close to all she wanted to say.

And so instead of saying a thing, she just looked around the apartment again – a place that seemed to her just slightly outside of a style she knew the youngling she'd known might once have chosen for himself. And it was then that her optics caught sight of another bot – a fellow flyer – in rare pale white and yellow colours, who stood facing toward a counter top with her back halfway hidden behind a partial dividing wall. She turned around then, grinning an adorable and mischievous little grin, as she lifted a tray of energon goodies she'd been putting together off the counter top and just stood holding it.

"This is Firestorm," Soundwave said, with the brightest smile Shortwave could even recall seeing on his face-plate, as he gestured toward the bot with the tray. "She is the true love of my life..."

Soundwave had found love. Shortwave gasped with joy once she knew that. Years of her worries for him during his youngling years flooded through her processor and she remembered clearly just how she'd feared that maybe he wouldn't or couldn't... that maybe he was just a little too different from other bots to relate quite enough. And she took a fast intake to force back her tears of relief when she understood just how she'd been wrong. Her strange and wonderful, worrisome youngling had found love... And Firestorm's near youngling like grin was simply beautiful.

"It was Firestorm that was searching for you," Soundwave said. And he took the little white and yellow bot's tiny hand in his just as soon as she had set down the tray on a small table in front of the sofa. He smiled at her more then brightly enough to make Shortwave sure she might almost cry with joy at simply seeing the pair together. "She had Ratchet check and recheck every record she could think of, always insisting you had to be somewhere long after anyone else would have given up for lost..."

Lightwave would have easily sat for hours unnoticed if she'd been left to it. Light' never fussed or demanded attention – she couldn't. But Shortwave picked her up anyway, to hold her on her lap for a while as the small group of bots, still mostly unsure what to say to each other, all sat exchanging looks and smiling now and then. Soundwave reached out, after some long moments clearly asking without speaking, to hold the small youngling himself. And Shortwave, smiling brightly, placed her onto his knees, noticing his clear and obvious uncertainty at once as he struggled a little to learn quickly enough how to support the weight of a bot incapable of holding herself up.

"Please don't think for a second that Light's tiny life is without real value or purpose..." Shortwave said suddenly, moved to speak up because it seemed so very important now.

Soundwave should never have felt like that might have been the case, and she knew that in her spark, She certainly had not raised a bot to hold such views and she never would. Blast' certainly had no such opinions. But Soundwave had been so young when she'd last seen him – a bot with a lot left to learn. And he'd grown into adulthood without her in a city more known than any for Cybertron's terrible old functionalist opinions...

"I would have told you once that I thought exactly that," Soundwave said slowly, his tone both honest and clearly regretful. "But I've since been forced to rethink such ideas." He sat still in the chair he'd pulled out, staring across the apartment over his tiny sister's head for a long moment, before adding seriously, "There is... hope here in this new city."

 **Notes/ Thanks for continuing to read this. As always feedback and suggestions are always greatly appreciated and make my day. This one took a bit longer than I wanted in order to get posted, and yeah, sorry about that. I literally decided to flip the order of a couple chapters while the one that's now up next was half way through the rough draft and this one was barely started. With most everything I finally end up posting, what I start with and what you end up reading can become quite different as I edit, rewrite and scrap scenes... fellow writers will relate to this surely.**

 ***Thinks it might be kind of fun one day to make a couple of single chapter cute shorts out of a couple of 'cut scenes' that no one would otherwise ever seen because they just don't quite fit anywhere... ***


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes/ I've had a few days off, and no life to speak of. Also, this chapter basically wrote itself. So I'm updating so quickly because of all that. It's very short but it feels finished to me and I'm about to start the next one anyway. This is another pretty much entirely Soundwave/Firestorm centred chapter... but I feel a light warning is in order here. This one gets heavy by the end**

"Do you remember that day my creator left us alone all day locked in our apartment... you brought out that paint you'd been hiding from him..." Soundwave asked laughing hard as he remembered a day so long ago.

And Shortwave, sitting on a large slab of cobalt at the furthest corner of the city park, looked up at him. Her optics, which had cleared of coolant from her third hard round of laughter, filed instantly with more and she nearly fell forward right off the metal slab she was sitting on.

"I had nothing to really paint on and no need to repaint anything, but I decided I would paint on your body armour..." she laughed.

"I was so impressed when you finally let me look at myself in the wash station... that incredible space battle scene you'd made. You were an amazing artist..."

"Remember the rooftop?"

Soundwave smiled at this instantly, nodding.

"You used to take me up there to get me away from creator, when he'd get too drunk and threaten to beat me because I wouldn't even try to speak," he said. And although that was certainly terrible and sad, he went on smiling anyway. "I'd always talk to you though because you never laughed or smacked me in the face-plate when I got ten words all wrong. And you'd spin me around, holding my hands until my feet left the floor..."

"You'd laugh so hard, and insist that you could fly..."

Soundwave nodded again, laughing for perhaps the fourth time in that hour of visiting. But when he stopped again this time, he found himself looking intently at his creator's face-plate – far more so than he had yet in the days since they'd reunited. He remembered what she'd looked like on that rooftop... just what she'd been that day she'd found paint. He remembered the way she'd assumed she could do anything... someday. And yet she'd seemed to know so little in the then and now.

"You were so young then," Soundwave said. And the realization struck him hard because in his memories she'd always been much older. "Very young..."

"I was," Shortwave answered. She laughed a little, but it was a kind of nervous laugh now. "Still a forth frame youngling when your were born. You'd lived a decade before I reached a century..."

"Even back then there were laws against such situations," Soundwave muttered. He knew the law well, both modern and historic thanks to his work in law enforcement. And suddenly he hated his creator more then he ever had before, for daring to illegally own an interface slave who was still very much a child herself when she was sold and purchased.

"Do you really think he was ever one to give a frag about laws?" Shortwave said back. And her tone was serious and sad even as she shook her head as though it didn't matter to her anymore.

"Soundwave, do you remember the song I used to like to sing to you?" she asked, changing the subject again right back to the more joyful of their memories.

"There were a few..." Soundwave answered, laughing because no matter which one she might have actually meant, it was equally funny. "You used to change the words to them all. And you were so quick too. You even..." Soundwave absolutely burst out laughing then so hard he could barely speak and he nearly fell of the slightly lower metal slab he'd found his own seat on. It was the hardest he could ever recall laughing in his life and it surprised him to openly do so even in the moment. "You... even had a one lovely one about Creator falling out a window!"

"I can't remember all the words I made up anymore. But... I did still find myself singing the first verse sometimes while I flew my ship through empty space..."

"I used to wish I could sing as well as you..."

"I don't think I ever once heard you try to in your youngling years."

"I didn't," Soundwave answered, still smiling as his laughter finally died away. He never had tried it even once, because he could only even image it would have been a hard thing to do. It was difficult enough for him - even now when it outwardly seemed like he was so much batter – to keep his words straight while simply speaking. He'd never once imagined it could possibly work out any better while trying to sing lyrics.

"Try it!" Shortwave urged, a confidant smile filling her face-plate now. And when Soundwave just looked at her half sideways, as though she'd suddenly lost her mind entirely, she grinned bigger through her laughter and looked completely serious somehow. "You can't say you wish you could if you've never tried to even once."

"Maybe someday I will, Carrier," Soundwave answered, before he started laughing again.

"Can I ask you a question?" Shortwave asked a second later. And her optics stared at his, this time completely seriously

"Of course you can, carrier..."

"The day I first came to meet you with your brother and your sister... you said there was hope in this city for a bot like Lightwave..."

"Yes."

"What exactly did you mean by that?"

Soundwave sat a moment just watching her and smiling, before he smiled down at his tiny sister who lay on the ground - the soft stuffed toy she must have loved, laying across her navy blue chest panel - on a soft blue cover their carrier had brought along for her and produced earlier from somewhere at the bottom of the chair she was pushed in. Two bots had of course come to mind at once, both of which could began to make his point well.

"I've known two bots to suffer from processor damage," he said, quickly deciding to keep it simple as neither was really his story to tell. He smiled brighter at Lightwave, somehow moved when her half closed optics lit a little in what he guessed could just have been recognition. "You know them both too, carrier. One of them is the youngling ward's medic. And the other is Firestorm."

If Shortwave looked shocked and surprised at the mention of the first bot - and she did - then the mention of the second made her optics open wide with her disbelief.

"Knockout's condition was once much worse than Firestorm's," Soundwave explained. "Though... his language systems were completely unaffected, while hers were. And neither was close to as badly damaged as Light' seems to be. Still Ratchet found a way to fix both of them eventually, and I can't imagine he'd give up on Lightwave either."

"I had no idea..." Shortwave muttered, her shocked surprise more obvious than ever.

"Talk to Firestorm," Soundwave told her confidently. "She really won't mind. She's hardly that type." he considered for a moment. "I will be working tomorrow afternoon, but she should be home. I'll tell her to expect you. You can have a nice little visit because she absolutely loves you too. You could easily talk to Knockout too, I would imagine. I cannot imagine he'd mind..."

* * *

Firestorm had just left the wash station after purging her tanks in a sudden unexpected and terrible bout of queasiness, and she leaned for a moment against the coolness of the outside wall of the recharge station, letting the metal of it cool her overheated body armour. She moved again talking a few steps across the room, and toward the door into the hallway, when she turned around again. A sudden need to continue purging her tank made her run back to the wash station at full speed ahead.

She sat on the cold floor for a good while after that. And she wondered even after she was convinced she was finally done with being sick, if perhaps she ought to comm Soundwave. He was busy, she knew well, thinking of a case he'd mentioned working last night in which a bot had been robbed in his home at blast point. And she decided at once not to bother him over such a thing as a queasy and unsettled fuel tank. And she felt better, she realized, now that her tank was mostly empty of whatever had clearly upset it. She moved to stand up again, just slightly shaky. And slowly she crossed the tiny room to wash her face-plate under a cool stream of water.

Firestorm resolved to check on the iron flavor packet from which she had poured some powder into her fuel that morning, sure it may well have been stale, as she stood up straight again. And she wondered if perhaps she ought to lay down to rest a while. She was strangely tired in the middle of the day for the third time in days. But a buzzing at the door of the apartment put all thoughts of a short nap out of her head at once. She hurried instead for the door, still shaken a little from her sudden bout of purging.

"Shortwave! Blast' and Light'!" she exclaimed happy despite her sudden tiredness, when she saw Soundwave's family gathered in a tight little group in her doorway. She of course extended a hand to wave them all inside, stepping out of their way to let them do so, before she followed them in after she'd allowed the door to slide shut behind them all.

"Soundwave encouraged me to visit with you today," Shortwave explained, smiling a little with a look of slight uncertainty as she sat down in the tiny living room.

"He mentioned that you might," Firestorm answered back, remembering that then, and feeling just slightly silly for being so suddenly scatter-brained as to have forgotten all about it.

She hurried to the fuel dispenser, wedged tightly into the only place it had even seemed to fit, between the main door and a small storage closet filled with stacked crates of odds and ends. And after dumping the possibly no good flavor packets out, she brought a small dish of the rest of them to the living room, offering the bowl to let Shortwave and Blast' choose.

Shortwave shook her head with a small smile, insisting cheerfully that she had only ever liked her energon completely unflavored. Blast' was hesitant too, clearly never having tried added flavors in his fuel at all yet But he slowly inspected the packets in the bowl with his small hands before he finally pulled out a cobalt flavoured one – which made Firestorm instantly smile because she knew that was Soundwave's favourite one too.

"Firestorm, would you mind terribly filling this for Lightwave?" Shortwave asked, hesitantly. She held out a small specialized fuelling container, with a long spout and a handle on it, which she had found after digging a little through a bag hung from the handlebars on lightwave's chair. Firestorm nodded, smiling, and asked if tiny Light' might like added flavour too, and Shortwave appeared to think for a second.

"Maybe..." she answered, in a tone that said it could not possibly hurt anything. "I've never given her anything flavoured at all... sadly I can't even began to guess what she might like to try..."

Firestorm frowned then, sadly, at the thought of both younglings having lived their entirely lives so far, however short they may have been on a ship where they'd never even had the chance to have flavoured fuel or any treats. She remembered the tray of energon cakes and sweets she'd brought out the day she;d first met them all, and laughed again at how Blast' had so obviously stuffed a few of various kinds into his storage compartment, probably for later. But Light' – she had never yet gotten to try anything at all, and it did seem only fair that she get something sweet too.

Aluminum, Firestorm decided quickly, smiling to herself and knowing that particular metal had a lovely sweet flavor that most younglings seemed to like. She took a package from her bowl, and poured some into the fuelling bottle, before quickly filing it at the dispenser. The suddenly far too sweet smell of the power she'd poured into the bottom of the container hit her scent receptors had. And for a second she felt, to her dismay, like the might just purge again. But thankfully she didn't. And as an afterthought, on her way back to the living room, she grabbed a couple of small energon goodies left over from the other day for Blastwave.

"Soundwave suggested I talk with you," Shortwave said, when Firestorm sat down next to Blastwave on the sofa.

She looked doubtful and more hesitant than ever. But still she was clearly determined all the same. And looking at her, watching as she smiled down at her young helpless and damaged daughter who now sat supported on her lap as she was fuelled slowly from the container that had been filled for her, Firestorm understood at once. She may not have had a youngling of her own. But that hardly meant she couldn't recognize the desperation of any carrier worth of the title, to save her own. And she knew exactly what Shortwave had come to talk to her about, because of Soundwave's heads up that she might stop by.

And so without even being asked, she quickly and carefully shared her story – explaining her fall in her youngling years and the damages it had caused her. She remembered her struggles and explained them out loud as she did, all while trying hard not to leave out anything that might have been even slightly helpful, and wondering all the while if any of it really was at all. She finally questioned that too.

"More then helpful," Shortwave smiled brightly. Her smile looked so strangely like Soundwave's. It made Firestorm grin at once.

"I... haven't upset you at all, I hope, Firestorm..." Shortwave muttered apologetically after a good moment. And Firestorm just shook her head easily.

"Of course not," she answered, still smiling. And she looked again at Lightwave who clearly struggled hard just to suck on the end of her fuelling spout hard enough to get anything out of it. and to drink it. But the youngling's optics were bright all the same. And it was easy to guess she was enjoying the sweet taste of the added aluminum.

"You want to save your child," Firestorm said, smiling with both her understanding and her admiration for that. "And you won't give up while there might be a way. How can I not tell you as much as I can if it helps you help her...?"

"Thank you, Firestorm." Shortwave just smiled again, a near exact copy of Soundwave's nervous and hesitant little hint of a smile.

"May I hold Lightwave?" Firestorm begged a moment later, when she saw that the youngling had stopped drinking from her container entirely. And Shortwave just smiled brighter at her question.

"Of course you can," she said, standing to put the youngling into her arms. "You... know that she can't support her own weight at all?"

"Yes." Firestorm nodded slowly and just a little sad as she took the damaged child from her carrier. But Lightwave was still a small youngling just like any other, and she loved every one of them. Light' certainly was a bit heavy – about as much as Cybershock or Hotwire and his twin siblings must have weighed by then. But it was still far more like holding a newborn first-frame in her arms than anything. And she smiled at the child, even managing to rocked just a little in her chair with Light' in her lap, just because she seemed so young. She listened, pleased, when Lightwave whirred a little, her optics partly opening for a second.

"What happened to her?" she asked, because having never seen a youngling anything like Light' before, she'd always naturally been curious about her since they'd met.

"Nothing happened to her," Shortwave answered. And she shook her head then a little as thought she thought her answered might not have really made any sense. "I mean... Light' was born this way. This is what she's always been."

"I hope I didn't offend you..." Firestorm said, but Shortwave simply smiled again.

"Of course not," she answered, clearly meaning it. And she looked for a moment at her smallest youngling, still in Firestorm's arms. "She was so different from others from the start. She can't cry. So the day she was born and placed into her frame she just kind of laying still looking close to offline. I... thought at first she'd catch up but she just never got much better..."

Firestorm, quite understandably, was sad at that. This youngling, she thought should, in a perfect world be out goofing off and laughing with Cybershock and Switchgear, and their friend Hotwire - all of who were probably somewhere around her age And she slowly opened her mouth again, about to express her sadness. But Shortwave just smiled at her again before she could. And she nodded toward her youngling.

"It's not all terrible," she said. "I don't know what she's thinking exactly, or how much she can think... but it seems it's so basic a process to her that she really just kind of... is. She's innocent... she'll be a youngling forever, and the tiniest of things make her so happy..."

"I suppose I hadn't thought of it like that," Firestorm mused back, smiling again herself now.

"Firestorm, you look so pretty with a youngling in your arms," Shortwave said. And when Firestorm looked up again, the older bot was grinning like a youngling herself. "I can easily picture how you will look any day now with yours and Soundwave's first child sleeping in your lap in this living room..." she paused a moment only to grin even brighter before she chuckled a bit and said quite pointedly, "And surely you can imagine how pleased I'll be to spoil the paint off my first grand-creation!"

"Soundwave and I won't be having younglings of our own," Firestorm answered, suddenly awkward and sad and strangely guilty all at once. And she lowered her gaze, pretending to fuss with making Lightwave more comfortable across her knees, so as to avoid looking at Shortwave for a second.

Soundwave would do anything for her. He'd give her anything she asked, just to make her happy. He'd done it for years already. Even when she insisted up and down so often that he didn't need to. They had a wonderful life together, and their home, though so small, was beautiful. But the matter of a child was the one thing he never had budged on even one slight bit. And a good few years had passed already since she'd last asked him for one, deciding that an otherwise perfect life with the only bot she could imagine ever loving was certainly not worth upsetting with any constant pestering about it.

"Oh?" Shortwave's tone and expression were both clearly surprised and disappointed. And Firestorm just frowned a little while trying hard to keep her face-plate serious instead of sad.

"Soundwave has his career with the police force now," she said. "And... I have my business, which takes up my time. This apartment really is small, and..." she left it at that because suddenly her tank was rolling again, and she'd began to quickly panic over some possibly need to run fast for the wash station while the damaged youngling lay in her lap.

"Firestorm," said Shortwave, while she and Blast – who was busy nibbling on a leftover goodie – exchanged looks of concern. "Are... you alright?"

"I'm good," Firestorm said easily, smiling again and happy as the discomfort somewhere in her tank settled itself on its own.

* * *

The very last place Firestorm thought she'd been spending that morning was in the medbay. Yet, that's exactly where she suddenly was. Soundwave stood beside her, his optics never leaving her as she lay on the recharge station she'd woken up on – the one closest to the far back wall – a short while before. He smiled a little, his look of confidence doing little to hide his anxiety from her. And she smiled back up at him, assuring him right back, because she felt like nothing at all was really wrong.

"I must just pushed myself too hard is all," she told him.

"You need to be fuelling well before you fly that fast" Soundwave reminded her pointedly. And when she tried to sit herself up, he gently shoved her back down with his hand resting against her chest panel, so that she would stay laying flat. "You should have had a full container this morning and at least half more before you decided to try stunt flying..."

"I... I did fuel," Firestorm replied. She really had. Her queasiness – which had only grown worse in the past couple of days, had finally lifted the day before. And since it had, she had been drinking energon with an apatite for it like nothing she had ever experienced before. And she knew she'd had enough that morning because she'd finished two whole containers in the hours after waking, having added calcium to both because she was strangely unable to get enough of the flavor now, although it had always been far from her favourite.

"You haven't been yourself lately..."

"I've been fine..."

"We should not have been out flying," Soundwave said. He took her hands in his, and she smiled up at him, even as he continued to gently admonish her. "Firestorm, you should have told me you didn't feel well today. I asked you to fly with me because I know you love it. But you know you can always say no..."

"I was fine when we took off," Firestorm explained honestly. And she tried to smile again, though he was admitted growing concerned herself now about her own health and safety.

She'd lost conscious out of nowhere while in the air. She didn't recall doing so exactly. But she knew full well she must have. Because one moment she'd been flying just as hard as she could through the open sky, Soundwave beside her and both of them laughing as he dared her easily to try a double sideways roll... and the next she'd woken up in that medbay, a curtain closed around her and the lights dimmed for rest. What if Soundwave hadn't been with her? She asked herself this on the verge of panic at that thought. He must had successfully grabbed her. But what if he hadn't managed it? She could easily had crash landed and that could have killed her.

Soundwave sensed her sudden unease, and she knew it. Because he held her hands tighter, and smiled again with greater assurance then before. And he was still doing so, when the curtain moved and a medi-bot that was only the slightest bit familiar crept in past it. Ambulon. Firestorm recalled his name slowly. And her unease increased again when she remembered that Ratchet, one of a couple of medics she trusted most, was away from Cybertron on some matter of urgent importance. And Knockout – the other one she might have trusted just as much - usually though not always, worked with only youngling patients.

"Good afternoon," the medic greeted pleasantly, professional and smiling, while he read quickly from a datapad in his hands. "...Firestorm?"

Firestorm just nodded mutely, confirming her name while she wondered if perhaps she would be allowed to sit herself up yet.

"I've reviewed some scans I took when you were brought in." The medic smiled again, before he pulled over a couple of chairs from against the wall. He sat in one, close to the side of the recharge station, and motioned with a polite wave of his hand for Soundwave to take the other. "Soundwave here explained to me that you went into power down while flying at five thousand feet. Do you remember anything?"

"Sorry. No..." Firestorm just shook her head. More worried now at understanding she'd been out long enough to recharge through scans on top of everything else.

The medic grabbed a small light and held it in front of her optics, asking her to follow it - which she easily could – before he grabbed each of her hands instructing her to push against them in a test of her strength, and the other usual assessments of function. And finally, when he was all done with that, he nodded, chuckling just a little.

"I wasn't expecting you'd have any problems with function, which you certainly don't," he said, his tone assuring.

"What did you find from the scans you mentioned?" Firestorm asked in reply. She looked around, more anxious than ever. "Anything?"

"I did indeed," Ambulon answered. But instead of the usual expression one might expect to see on the face-plate of a medic as he read out scan results, he smiled brighter, as he looked from Firestorm to Soundwave and back again.

"You'll need to start upping your fuel intake even more than normal for a flyer," he said calmly. "At some point soon there will be additives too... Firestorm, congratulations. You are carrying."

The medic said more, going on just a little about the importance of rest, and how Firestorm could still fly at least for a while yet as long as she felt well enough and took it slow and easy. He said he knew she'd likely want her case handed over to Ratchet when he returned, and how he'd been more than happy to hand over her case because he knew she trusted him the most... but Firestorm barely heard any of it well enough to process the meanings of the words.

Her audials rang and the room appeared to spin a little and then faster as her spark beat faster behind her chest panel and a million thoughts ran through her processor at once. She was terrified. More so than she had ever been in her life, because this was all new and a complete unexpected unknown. But she was happy too. Overjoyed. If not for her shock, she might well have broke out into smiles before promptly jumping up and down. Her very own baby! She was going to be carrier, just like she'd always wanted. Just like she'd still wanted more then she ever dared to admit when she'd decided to give up the dream.

Her thoughts raced faster. And although she knew even then that on some level it was silly, she wondered who her child, still a newspark so young she'd only just learned it was there at all, was destined to be. She guessed quickly that it was a girl and then promptly changed to guess, deciding instead that it 'felt' like a boy to her. And then she wondered if she'd guessed wrong after all, and decided it didn't matter in the least. She wouldn't find out, she decided at once. Speedbreaker never once learned the gender energies of any of hers and it seemed like such fun to be surprised. She imagined how she'd hug her child every day. How he would grab her fingers and giggle and how she'd read to him and sign him songs as soon as he was just a little bigger. And Soundwave would love the baby too. Surely he'd have too, although he'd always said no to creating one. Now that it was happening anyway, he smile and brag... and he'd have pictures on a data pad in his office at work...

Firestorm looked up them at Soundwave. Sure he'd been shocked beyond words before he got to be happy. She wanted to hug him, to let him hug her a while before they went home to decide where to put a first-frame recharging basket – she decided quickly that she wanted a simple on in a 'classic' style and that it should fit next to a window... But Soundwave was looking away from her when she looked up, his optics staring at the floor. His hands had let go of hers at some point in the midst of her musing, and now hung at his sides clenched into determined fists. He didn't even seem to notice as she sat up on the recharge station, and swung her legs over her side, with a smile clean across her face-plate.

"This can be... resolved I would assume?" he questioned the medic, coolly and serious, as he finally looked him in the optics.

"Re... resolved?" Ambulon repeated, just as though he didn't quite understand.

"Younglings are not in the plan for us," Soundwave clarified, still calm and with his fists still at his sides. "This one was an unexpected accident... surely it isn't to late to get rid the newspark?"

"Well..." the medi-bot was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. But professionalism compelled him to answer honestly regardless. "Firestorm is quite far along already to have not known until now. There is still time to do such a thing safely, but not a great deal of it. You will both need to decide in a few short days..."

"No!" Firestorm blurted, interrupting firmly as she jumped down to the floor. She could barely believe what was being discussed and so calmly, just as though it was real an option. Her spark pounded, near breaking at once, and her tank flipped and flipped until she was sure she would lose that morning's fuel and all she'd had the night before all over the medbay floor.

She grabbed Soundwave's arm hard and spun him around with surprising force to face her, rage burning though her frame where she had never once been truly angry with him. Her own hand – the free one still not holding his arm – clenched into a tight fist of her own,and she wondered fro a fleeting second is she really meant to hit him.

"How. Could. You." She demanded, optics burning with furry. Each word she spoke was slow, deliberate. And her free hand unclenched at once to rest instead protectively over her spark chamber, as if to guard the tiny spark she'd only just learned existed, but loved all the same. Her voice quickened rising in pitch and filled with tears as she damaged again, "Soundwave! How the slagging scrap could you...?"

"Fire...storm..." Soundwave answered, clearly shaking now and terrified as he spoke. "Please... give me a short while... I'll see you at home..."

"Are you going to be alright?" the medi-bot asked, somewhat hesitantly and so clearly unsure what to do, when Soundwave walked out of the curtained off cubicle and then clear out of the medbay without another word.

"I... I don't know..." Firestorm answered. She held her spark chamber with both hands because it almost physically hurt to think of Soundwave's behaviour. And she could not stop thinking about it. It played through her processor again and a again, like a data-disc stuck on repeat. She looked down at her hands then and saw how bad both were trembling.

"I... didn't mean for that to happen," the medic said. His face-plate was a clear mix of apologetic and horrified. "Creators are usually so happy... even if the newspark wasn't quite planned..."

"It wasn't your fault," Firestorm told him. And she would have said more, but before she could form another single word, she instead burst into spark-broken, sobbing tears.

"Would... you like to see the newspark?" the medic asked, his tone clearly uncertainly because he still clearly had no idea what he should do. "I could... give you a scan if you'd like one right now. You're already so far along it should be easy to see it spinning..."

Firestorm smiled at once, through her tears, nodding eagerly before she followed his instruction to lay back down again.

"You aren't going to force me to let you... get rid it... are you?" she asked him, quietly and shaking harder, disgusted by the words she'd just spoken out loud.

And the medi-bot, a scanner already in his hand and powered up, shook his head firmly in under a second, with a smile of assurance on his face-plate.

"No one can make you make that decision," he said seriously. "Not Soundwave and most certainly not me or any other medic. This is your youngling, Firestorm. And if you want to be a carrier, there is always a way, even if things do prove a little... complicated."

* * *

It was well into early evening, when Firestorm finally went home. But she did feel better by then, or least mostly so.

"Soundwave?" she called out quietly, into their apartment, which was strangely well lit that evening – nearly ever light in each room, including the wash station oddly enough, blaring bright on near their top settings.

"I'm down here," Soundwave's voice called back, from the recharge room. And he sounded calmer now, almost cheerful.

Firestorm hurried down the narrow hallway. She wanted to hug him, because she'd missed him just as much as ever. And for a moment she thought everything might just have been okay again. Perhaps he'd been thinking just as hard as she had, and perhaps he'd changed his mind. She even let herself imagine he'd be happy now, and they'd play their music discs that night while the snacked on rust sticks in their recharge station playfully compared their favourite prospects for their child's name, She nearly tripped, just outside the door, over a still open packing crate, and her spark sunk at once.

"You were gone a while" Soundwave observed. He was sitting on the edge of the recharge station, another crate in front of him. And this one, he was just sitting upright from closing tightly.

"I had to think a while," Firestorm answered. She saw quickly, when she looked around the room, that Laserbeak's perches were gone from the walls, among other things. Her tank flipped harder. "I... I talked for a while with the medic of course. Then I just had to be alone. So I went to sit in the park... finally I went to the marketplace. I... I was looking for a good while at newborn things... The medic gave me first first scan today... the newspark is strong and perfect. He said he could have identified the gender already but I said I didn't want to know yet..." Firestorm rested a hand again over her spark chamber, begging him with her optics to understand, though at the same time she knew his own thinking was well past that. "Soundwave. I can't destroy it. It's my child... our child... "

"You're right," Soundwave said. He smiled then, the same calm assuring smile she'd seen from him so many times. But it was so different now, so sad and... devastated. He sat up straighter and held out his arms, which she ran across the room to fall into at once. "You can't terminate your youngling. You've wanted one more than anything for so long... and I understand how wrong and disgusting it was of me to think that was the answer."

"Wh... what's with these crates?" Firestorm asked him. She feared she already knew, but she wanted him to say it anyway, to confirm that he hadn't lost her mind in her panic.

"I'm leaving tonight," Soundwave said, still just as calm and just as sadly. "I've comm'd Bulkhead, who said I can recharge on his sofa for a while until I get a new housing assignment soon. You love this place and you always have. It's only right that you should keep it for you and the youngling, and I should be the one to go..."

"Soundwave..." Firestorm found herself close to begging as she fought back tears and he simply held her tight against him just he always had during the best of times. "We... don't need to do this. We don't need to be... over. We can figure this out!"

"If I outright asked you to choose between my and that youngling of ours, I know fully fragging well what your choice would be." Soundwave smiled at her in clear nonjudgmental understanding when she moved back from him and looked him in the optics. "So I won't ask you to choose. And in any case your choice isn't wrong."

"Soundwave..."

"For all it's worth, my Firestorm, you'll be a wonderful carrier. Amazing. You'll tell the baby the most wonderful stories, and rock her by the window... and you'll teach her to fly. Bots can do this alone and you'll do it as well as any." Soundwave moved then, reaching out to rest a hand over her spark chamber, before he spoke again. "I can't be part of her life because I'm the very last thing she needs in it. And don't think that doesn't break my spark... someday when she's big enough I hope you will tell her that I loved her too..."

"You don't need to leave tonight," Firestorm said, tears of coolant filling her optics and rolling down her face-plate before she could stop them. "Stay here tonight... stay a few days and we'll wait for Ratchet to get home. He will have some good advice for us..."

"Staying longer will only us both far sadder when I must finally leave later," Soundwave answered simply. And with that he held out an arm for a clearly upset, confused and frustrated Laserbeak, who had been perched on the highest of the corner shelves, and caught her gently before he ordered her to her dock. Then he simply picked up the crate at his feet, added the one in the hallway to his load and walked out without a look back.

Firestorm dropped to sit on the recharge station, numb with shock while her tears dried on her face-plate. And it felt to her like she must have sat there for hours, not moving and barely able to even think of doing so, too defeated and terrified, overwhelmed and uncertain of anything to even think. When she finally did move again it was so late into the evening. And the sun had set completely, leaving the window behind her dark. She dragged herself to her feet and made her way to the window meaning to close the heavy curtains she'd chosen at Soundwave's insistence soon after they'd first moved in. But instead she just stared out for a while at the darkened city and the lights shining far below. Her hand went back to rest over her spark chamber again, as she finally yanked the curtained shut with the other. And she stumbled back then onto the recharge station, where she dragged the covers over herself and just lay that way, hand over her tiny newspark and more tears falling again.

"We'll figure this out," she said out loud to the newspark she carried, who she'd watched spinning and spinning on the scans and could not see as anything less than a living spark already because clearly he was. "We'll make it somehow... just you and me now."


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes/ Thanks for the comments on the last chapter I posted. I honestly wasn't exactly such strong reactions. I truly do hope I didn't actually offend anyone however. Someone mentioned fall out in this next one... one yes. And here you have it. I'm glad to hear there are so many Soundwave/Firestorm supporters too, considering Firestorm is simply one of my Ocs. Obviously I've always been glad she's well liked, because she's one of my own characters. In any case, to you, I say... as always I have a plan and there is a method to my madness.**

Firestorm sat on a familiar padded chair in the familiar waiting area outside Ratchet's office. It was the first time she'd ventured out in... she thought about it, wondering just how long it had been, and decided it had clearly been too long. She shook her head then, sadly, before she forced back her tears, more just like those that still threatened without warning at least once a day and usually more, and decided she'd had about enough of crying.

The door slid open, while she was barely paying attention to it at all, and she found herself looking across the hallway at a familiar old bot who she was so shockingly relieved to see.

"Ratchet" she cried, standing up from her chair at once, to follow him into the small office, as he gestured with his hand for her to do so.

Instead of seating himself immediately behind his desk as the door slid shut behind them, Ratchet reached out to pull Firestorm against the front of his frame. And for a long moment he just stood that way, hugging her tightly in the middle of his office.

"I... guess you've been informed..." Firestorm said, grateful and sad, overwhelmed and suddenly hopeful at all once, just as soon as he let her go again. She watched him finally take his chair, and she took one for herself in front of his large desk.

"Ambulon told me everything," the old medic answered, serious so clearly sad himself. "Well, as much as he could without it all being a direct violation of the confidentiality between you and himself..."

"He said he wanted to... I told him it was okay if he did..."

"I understand you got kept the apartment. I'm... sorry if that might none of some old bot's business"

"I did. Soundwave told me I should keep the place without me ever even asking. He... knew how much I always loved the place... even when he always questioned how it could truly have been the one I wanted..."

"Your paint shop has been closed for days it seems. I got back a few hours ago to a couple of students casually discussing their disappointment at being unable to get those graphics that were becoming so popular..."

Firestorm knew she should open up shop again. The place was her livelihood. And she needed a reliable living more now then ever before. She was good at what she did, and in the years she'd done it, she'd managed to build a good customer base. She enjoyed the work. And usually she never seemed to tire of commissions and the colourful graphic designs that bots requested for their body panels on a daily basis. But she had barely been able to drag herself out of her recharge station and into the wash station to keep on looking decent, let alone force herself as far as the shop to deal with other bots all day long.

"I'll try hard to force myself to work tomorrow," she promised, not exactly sure if that was the answer the old bot was looking for or not But she saw him smile just a little anyway.

"Good to hear it," he said, before the serious expression left his face-plate, and he added, possibly joking and possibly not, "I've been thinking about getting a nice graphic myself. At first I was thinking maybe some flames... but then I figured that might be a bit crazy and wondered about something a little less... wild."

"Ambulon says the newspark is perfect..." Firestorm did giggle a little at the old medi-bot's comment, sure that had been his intention, and glad of the first laugh she'd had in too many days. But she changed the subject anyway.

"It certainly is, according to the record of your scans. Did he give you a photofile to keep?"

"N... no, he didn't. I... didn't know I could have one..."

"You most certainly can." Ratchet smiled again. "I will make one for you before you leave here today... youngling's first picture."

"Thank you..."

"All in a day's work," Ratchet smiled again, reaching over the desk to rest a hand on her shoulder lightly. He picked up his sweet bowl and smiled brighter as he offered it out to her, chuckling a little when she hesitated a moment considering carefully before she took a a sweet in sulphur flavor – one she had never much liked before, but suddenly found herself craving.

"I can't believe I'm really carrying," she muttered, somewhat shaky as she said it out loud, amazement over how it still sounded close to unbelievable. "You know I suppose, about... It was suggested that I..." She couldn't even force herself to say what she wanted to out loud, and only hoped the the old bot would understand her anyway.

"I do indeed." Ratchet frowned for a good moment, saying nothing, before he finally shook his head and added seriously, "I've been informed about that while situation by the the other medic..."

"I won't, Ratchet. I won't," Firestorm said, instantly protective of her child's tiny spark again, and covering it with her hands over her panel. "I'll raise him alone if that's what it takes to keep him, but I won't destroy him."

"Do you think I'd make you a photofile and tell you how healthy and perfect that newspark is, if I thought for a second you might want to do that?" Ratchet asked her, smiling assurance over his desk. And his hand rested again on her shoulder panel. "I know a few bots who would happily build a beautiful flyer frame for that beautiful baby in five days tops. You'll need a recharging basket too of course... pick one out anytime and get me the order number. We'll call it a gift from his great-grand-creator Ratchet."

"Th... thank... you..." Firestorm muttered, fighting off tears that had quickly threatened again.

"Think nothing of it" the old medic said. And he got up from his desk again, walking around quickly to hug her, as she cried hopelessly and overwhelmed. "I never had my own family, but you along with a few other bots, are pretty slaggin' close to it. I never got to buy a basket for a youngling of my own... and please pick a nice one. I insist on it"

"Ratchet?"

"Hmm?"

"Did I waste my time?" Firestorm questioned, sad again and tearful as she let go of the old bot and looked up at him. "I gave Soundwave years of my life. I loved him. I still love him... even after he rejected our baby. Because... I don't think he meant to be so sparkless, and I know he has his reasons. And I always knew how much he loved me too."

"You didn't waste your time," the old bot said. And he smiled an understanding and confidant smile, even when Firestorm knew some bots might have easily disagreed with his opinion. "You two loved each other, and true love between bots is never a waste. Besides, soon you'll have a wonderful youngling – a child I know full well you wanted for years but gave up on because Soundwave said never." The medic steeped back then and moved to sit behind his desk again, before he looked over the top of it and gave her a serious look, before he went right on speaking. "Some bots I know will be quick to hate Soundwave in all this... for thinking that to simply kill off a newspark because he doesn't want one was really an option, and to up and leave you behind when you refused. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't feel under any circumstances like he's in the right... I have yet to speak to him, but you better believe I plan to do exactly that before this day is over. Soundwave is certainly not stupid and he should know full well he has no right... But Soundwave is also such a complicated bot, and you know he's not much like anyone else. He looks for the logic in everything, and seeks solutions above anything else. To him, nothing is unsolvable or at least it shouldn't be and emotions are an after thought."

"He calmly asked a medic to terminate the life of our child, just like it was nothing," Firestorm said. Her sudden anger was enough to drown out her tears entirely. And she just sat in her chair, with her hands balled up into fists, and she silently cursed herself for still feeling love for that bot that had said such a thing.

"A situation exactly like this one was precisely what I feared years ago." Ratchet shook his head, so clearly unsure of exactly what to do. "For a bot as smart as he is when it comes to so many things, he can also be so hopelessly stupid and clueless about so much else."

"Everyone said we'd never make it... that I was too naive, and he was too very different from anyone."

"You tried your best. You truly loved the bot that the whole city said could never have learned how to love you back. And you just never know... he could still change his mind."

"You really think he might?" Firestorm asked, daring for hope for the first time since Soundwave had left. And instantly she questioned her own sanity in wanting to hope for that at all.

"Never say never," Ratchet answered. "it seems to me it's still a little soon to give up. Now," he waved his hand toward the office door. "If you'll come with me into the medbay, I'd like to give you a full carrier work up, as well as mix you some energon additive packs for you to start consuming tonight."

Firestorm followed the old bot slowly, as he led her into the medbay near his office. And she lay up in the repair table closest to the far back wall, looking nervously for a second at a tray of equipment he had in there already set up and waiting for her. He knew it shouldn't hurt her in the least – or least she certainly hoped so. Still, she wished Soundwave was beside her, to smile with her over their tiny newspark, and ask his own questions.

"Would you mind if I let Bumblebee scan and check you over?" the old medi-bot asked, waving then toward his young student, who Firestorm had only just noticed had come in at all. 'Bee stood near the edge of the closed curtain, smiling at her with obvious uncertainty.

"I will of course be here to oversee his work, but he needs his practice as much as anyone, and since I just happen to have a carrying bot here... I doubt 'Bee will even truly need me..." Ratchet continued, chuckling a little. Firestorm just nodded her agreement, nodding as she smiled back at the medical student.

Bumblebee immediately strapped an energon pressure monitoring cuff around Firestorm's arm, remarking after a moment that the pressure was just a little high, and deciding just as quickly that it was well within the safe range. He measured her temperature and nodded approval. Then he scanned the newspark again, showing Firestorm on the screen just how much it had clearly grown since she last seen it still recently. And he promised her the photofile she'd already been promised.

"Your recommendations for daily fuel additives, 'Bee?" Ratchet prompted him And the younger bot appeared to think carefully for a moment.

"One part medical grade iron power, to one point five parts copper... plus two mils fine ground gold in three parts energon twice daily," 'Bee said, with something very close to confidence as the old bot stared at this optics, clearly trying to unnerve him. "The... iron..." he nearly stammered a little clearly trying so hard before he picked up again where he'd paused and this time he finished confidently. "The iron is of great benefit to her own frame, which in her case is at least seventy percent iron based. The... copper will support her wiring systems as she has copper wiring. And the... gold is for the newspark – providing it with slightly more then enough fuel to grow and to stabilize that tiny spark..."

"Very good." Ratchet smiled at him now. "I trust you will have that mixed before you release her today. Continue."

Bumblebee nodded, and reached for his scanner again, holding it in his hands to adjust the settings before he began a full body scan, starting at Firestorm's feet. He stopped when he reached the middle of her frame though, and just stared for a good while at the screen, appearing visibly confused.

"Bumblebee..." Ratchet said, his tone almost impatient, and so clearly implying that he thought for sure his student should have known exactly what he was looking at by then.

"Ratchet," 'Bee answered, still doubtful, despite the reprimand. "Can you... have a look at this, please?"

"She's a perfectly healthy young carrier, 'Bee," Ratchet half grumbled, stepping closer to him to peek over at the scanner screen. "There is no reason at all to..."

The old medi-bot stopped abruptly however, and snatched the scanner from the young student's hands, looking it over himself for a moment, before he pulled it back and slowly moved it closer again to re-scan her, with disbelief clear in his optics.

"Ratchet, is that a...?" 'Bumblebee started to ask. But he stopped speaking again before he could finish and just stared at the screen.

"Wh... what is it?" Firestorm asked then. A sudden and horrible flash of fear flowed through her spark, as she imagined every terrible thing that might be wrong with the newspark she'd just been told was perfect. And she reminded herself firmly that the medic's attention was clearly on her midsection, and certainly not her spark chamber. And surely that was good news.

"You're fine, you're fine," Ratchet muttered, smiling a little at her as he motioned for her to keep on laying stay where she was.

"That's... the start of a protoform," the old medic said, speaking to his student, who just looked shocked, at the scanner screen.

"Is that the beginning of a fuel pump?" 'Bee questioned, still so clearly confused by what he was looking at.

"It is indeed," the medic nodded, before he pointed out some detail on the screen. "And you see this 'Bee? That looks like the very start of an intake system. There's the fan... and the pump..."

"So... my body is producing... parts?" Firestorm questioned them both, more shaken then ever, but deciding quickly that she was still relieved because it didn't sound like a terrible situation based on the old bot's tone of voice.

"It is," Ratchet said, smiling now and clearly almost pleased with the discovery, much to Firestorm's dismay and confusion. "You should eventually have a completed tiny bot with working internals and a perfect processor in there. And of course it looks like you won't need to build that frame I just offered to find you help with.

"But..." Firestorm was baffled now, far to nervous and unsure to care than she might have sound clueless and ridiculous. "That's not how younglings are made."

"Well it sure isn't in general," Ratchet only chuckled back. "At least it sure isn't commonly heard of anymore. I haven't seen and overseen the care of a protoform carrier in at least four centuries..."

"So, what will happen now?" Firestorm asked him. And she allowed herself to be more curious by now, because the medic's tone told her it was not bad news, even if it was close to unheard of.

"You'll keep on producing parts inside that protoform, that's currently growing itself nicely amid your gears and cogs," the medic told her calmly. "It should take around minty-seven more days or so. A bit longer than a standard carrying but perfectly safe in this case. I will need to scan you often... make sure the tiny youngling of yours develops every internal piece of it's body, and if by some chance it doesn't I'll begin building one ready to make repairs later. But don't worry yourself over that. Such issues are very uncommon. The spark of the youngling is growing, as you've seen in your spark chamber, and for now it spins around yours just like any. Much later in your carrying, it should separate, but it will be different from the usual... instead of going into full on spark separation, it will simply drop, joining with its frame ready for delivery in roughly fifteen to twenty more days."

"I... I was scanned so recently," Firestorm said, disbelieving, as she looked at the screen that Ratchet now showed her, pointing out the tiny intake pump and two formed blades of a fan inside the start of what could clearly become a bot of its own eventually. She wondered how the first medic who had looked her over – one with experience of his own – had missed all of that.

"Things change so fast at this stage," Ratchet told her, clearly understanding without a need for her to "The last time you were scanned there would not have been anything to see aside from the spark." He rested a hand on her shoulder for the third time that and smiled again with assurance.

"You and that little newspark are perfectly fine. And I really have seen such a carrying before. We can do this."

"Thank you," Firestorm said, gratefully again.

The young med student, at Ratchet's prompting, prepared to take an energon sample then. And Firestorm, who felt like she'd been through just one too maybe medical procedures in her life already, mostly thanks other processor damage, felt herself growing uneasy as she always had, however silently. Once again, she wished she wasn't all alone, and that thought only reminded her of the empty apartment she would go home to again. She fought back tears and trembled a little, while Ratchet, appearing to understand her thoughts, just patted her shoulder panel for a good moment and smiled at her.

########

Arcee walked beside her bondmate into a large presentation room on base. And found the place already half full when they got there. Autobots now residing on Cybertron again, and working in various positions all over the city, had come together for this meeting. And most of them had taken seats already, sitting scattered throughout the small auditorium, in serious casual conversations while a few others milled standing at the edges of the room. There were a few neutrals – those particularly interested in matters of security and safety – among them as well. And Arcee spotted Speedbreaker, unsurprisingly sitting in the very front row just as though she truly belonged there. She chatted idly with some extremely old Autobot commander, who had arrived in command of a ship filled with a very small crew and a handful of passengers perhaps a month before. And he looked genuinely impressed by Speedy, who talked about history and the Autobot side of the war just as though she herself had been an Autobot too.

Speedbreaker smiled, and politely excused herself with a motion of her hand, when Arcee and Knockout came closer to her, both sidestepping down the row of chairs to a couple of empty ones on the other side of her.

"What _did_ Ratchet's team discover out there?" Arcee questioned, directing it to no one in particular.

That's what this meeting was about – intel brought back by the medic and his small team of volunteers. But she had been able to gleam exactly nothing else about the matter from anyone so far. And she most certainly did not like it in the least.

"I'm not sure anyone knows yet," Speedbreaker answered her with a look of obvious uncertainty. She waved toward the old Autobot she'd been conversing with and added unhelpfully, "even the commander here haven't been told anything."

Ultra Magnus was seated in a seat of his own, a couple of rows up. And obviously hearing the conversation below him, the former Autobot commander turned police captain, shook his head to indicate his own lack of any knowledge.

"It makes sense that no one knows yet," said Bulkhead, sitting right behind Arcee, with Bumblebee beside him. He just shrugged a little when she looked right at him. "If no one drops a hint, we can't possibly have rumours flyin' around and no one is likely to cause a panic with false information."

"Let everyone hear the whole story at once, and we can all be sure we heard it right..." Arcee muttered, appreciating that in spite her edginess over still knowing nothing. "That's exactly what Optimus would do..."

"Yep," Bulk nodded his head, even smiling a little.

"Hey, Ratchet wasn't Prime's most trusted friend for no reason," Ultra Magnus added, smiling slightly himself.

"Hey," Speedy tapped Arcee's shoulder panel lightly with her hand, getting her attention, before she gestured with her optics toward the door, with was over to the right and still open. She smiled brightly. "Looks like Firestorm's finally made it out of her apartment."

Arcee turned to look toward the door, and sure enough caught sight of Firestorm who lingered for a moment in the doorway. Her paint was newly polished, but she'd so clearly missed a few places, and left scratches behind. And her optics were tired. She clearly stopped her friends up front, because she slowly began to walk toward them before slowly dropping down into a chair beside Knockout – who had so far been the bot at the end of their row.

"Hi," Arcee said to him simply, talking to her around the front of her mate's chest panel.

"Hello," Firestorm said back. Her voice was quiet and so clearly sad. But she smiled a little anyway, and glanced around the room with a look that reminded Arcee at once of a bot not sure if she should be there or not.

"Glad you could make it," Knockout told her. And it was quite obvious in that, that he simply wanted to assure her that she was just as welcome as anyone.

"Whatever Ratchet and his team have learned... I know it could be important," Firestorm explained. She leaned back on her chair, with her head dropping just slightly forward, and it was so easy to guess she'd barely recharged lately. "Anything that effects the planet effects me to, so..." she didn't bother to finish because she didn't need to.

"I... I've heard all about the newspark..." Arcee said, just slightly hesitantly. The city was still small. And word, even if bots didn't mean for it to spread, travelled far too fast. "And... I know about Soundwave too."

Arcee smiled slightly, hoping it looked something like assurance, because that was how she meant it. Firestorm was carrying, and Arcee still almost couldn't believe it was actually true. She supposed, on some level she should have been just a little jealous and annoyed that now both of her two best femme-friends were carrying newsparks together, while she herself was still most definitely not. But Firestorm's situation in particular – the spark break she'd faced long after anyone that knew her, had become truly convinced that she and Soundwave were forever and would surely get around to finally spark bonding some day – that whole mess left no room for jealousy. It was clearly instead that Firestorm simply needed any help that she could get, because she was soon to be the city's most unlikely single carrier.

"let's go out for drinks later," Speedy suggested, smiling brighter, before she giggled, adding, "non high grade of course... at least for Firestorm and I. I'm sure we can leave our younglings with our mates tonight!"

Arcee had rarely been out 'on the town' at all in years, except for planned Autobot events, usually on base. And frankly, the idea of going out for an evening under any other circumstances didn't exactly interest her much at all. But she could easily understand exactly what Speedy was trying to do, and she knew her friend was doing it for Firestorm. A fun night out, and a place where they could all talk for a while – assuming they could find a place not bursting to the brim with loud and fighting drunks – could be exactly what the young bot needed to make her feel just a little better.

Arcee nodded then with her silent agreement, and watched as Firestorm first shook her head to refuse, but finally gave in to prompting.

The room had been filled, all the while with the ongoing sound of many quiet conversations, and the odd short burst of casual laughter some somewhere or another. But it all died down abruptly. And in a second more it had all but stopped completely.

Arcee turned her attention right back to the front, along with her friends and her bondmate, in time to see Ratchet walk across to a low platform at the front of the room. He was followed closely by Smokescreen and Wheeljack, who had gone with him off planet, as well as three more Autobots, from other more recently returned teams, who had gone along as well – having decided much later in the planning that perhaps they ought to be included as 'back up'. Ratchet held up a hand, demanding attention, with a serious look on his face-plate. But there seemed very little need, because the group that was waiting, was already giving him their nearly full attention.

"You are waiting I suppose, on the outcome our our little 'off world outing,' the old bot said, taking a seat on the platform and looking suddenly wiry and worried. The look he gave was not lost on Arcee. And she stared ahead of her, with wide open optics and a pounding spark. Around her the crowd, practicably began to murmur.

"There weren't any prisoners dumped in the brig this morning," Bulkhead commented, speaking loudly enough to well heard. And others immediately murmured their confusion at that, Arcee included. Because all knew willing Ratchet had been to him a prisoner' or two, who might talk if needed.

"We had no need to take any," Ratchet answered. He laughed a tiny laugh but stayed serious all the while. "The 'cons we found out there – and we did find a few indeed – they were nothing more then scavengers. Lightly armed... their ship in disrepair. We think they were the very same scavengers described by Navigator Shortwave, in her recently filed report. In any case, those 'cons – I spoke with two – immediately began to blubber and bed as soon as it was proven how easily our tractor beam could have dragged their ship to ours and forced a docking, to allow us to easily get a hold of them."

There were a few laughs and some cheers around the room. And the old medi-bot waited for them to die down, before he chuckled a little to himself, and looked completely serious again.

"Needless to say they talked willingly," he continued. "A chance to fly away instead of a good stint in and Autobot holding cell, is usually enough to make 'em spill all the know... at least when it comes to the lower their ranks."

The old bot stopped then, his face-plate suddenly showing every bit of the worry and dread he'd been hiding so well before then. Wheeljack finally did so, with some clear and obvious hesitation, after moving slowly to the front of the raised platform.

"Everything they said to Autobot Shortwave was true. And both bots we saw and heard over comms, confirmed it by retelling everything and much more," Wheeljack explained. He looked uneasy too. And Arcee, noted that Wheeljack never seemed to look uneasy. He stood for a moment on the platform just shaking his head slightly, before he spoke again, his tone as serious as Arcee had ever heard it. "The 'cons are regrouping and they're working at it fast. They are following a new leader, who had promised them all a second chance at victory over Cybertron, and they claim full loyalty to him."

"Who is... this new 'con leader?" The question, surprisingly, was asked by Speedbreaker, who had managed to find her voice and speak up while most around her just sat shocked and stunned and horrified.

A couple of much older Autobots somewhere off to the far side of the room, stared at her with shocked disbelief, so clearly taken aback that a neutral would dare to speak up in an Autobot meeting. But aside from those two baffled stares no one else yet had their wits enough to react at all.

"Both scavengers have named Astrotrain," Wheeljack answered, his optics scanned slowly over the gathered group.

"So," Arcee said, her optics moving fast between Ratchet, 'Bee and Bulkhead – all of who had congregated with her in her furthest and half hidden corner of the auditorium, soon after the formal meeting had broken up. "What now?"

"Ain't that the question everyone's askin'?" Bulk' mumbled beside her. He looked at the floor, somewhere close to defeated.

"We don't know much," Bumblebee said. And suddenly, for the first time in years he sounded every bit like the young determined and ever sensible warrior he'd once been long before any bot should ever had to have been. He stood up straighter and looked his teammates in their optics. "What we do know though as that this Astrotrain is quite possibly on his way back to Cybertron eventually. And according to our forced intel, he might be bringing an army. That's not much to go on. We don't know how big this group of Astrotrain loyalists is... what they have for weapons... or even just how loyal and willing to fight they are."

"The 'Cons ended up just like the 'Bots by the end of the war," Ratchet pointed out. He'd gathered his senses well, and now stood straight and serious as ever, with his face-plate held in a intent sort of near scowl. "So many of them just fled in the endless chaos after Cybertron fell, because they had nowhere to go, and no real plan in place. Now there's so many that call themselves 'cons and they think that know what it all means to so proudly be one. But they've never seen a real battle... They'll happily march off to war, sure they're willing to die for their cause. But the first time they realize that real Autobot enemies are shooting back at them... that some are damaged and some may be off line... war somehow becomes real at that point."

"What about Astrotrain himself?" Arcee asked. She looked up at Ratchet, unsure exactly what it was she was dealing with, and not liking the feeling that caused her. "What's he like to try dealing with?"

"Hmm..." Ratchet considered for a moment, with his serious look still on his face-plate. "It's a bit hard to say for sure. We were pretty sure back in the day that he wanted be to leader, perhaps as much as Starscream did. But he was a different sort of bot... less loud and delusional, certainly less obvious about his ambitions. He was a decent fighter though, trained just as well as any, by the traditional Decepticon ways of be great or be killed while trying. In any case, I never personally thought he ever seemed all that smart."

"Do you think he can be reasoned with?" 'Bee asked. It certainly was a very good question. He knew well and fully believed in the power of reason, over the power of his blasters. "Maybe if we could just talk to the bot, he could see what we do... a world with potential in peacetime. Maybe, if he could just understand how much both sides are accomplishing here... together..."

"You really want to reason with a very big angry triple changer, 'Bee?" Ratchet sounded doubtful. But Bumblebee of course just nodded, confidant as ever for a bot still so you as he was.

"Yes," he answered slowly. "If I ever get my chance."

Arcee considered for a moment. And then she smiled a little, as a plan formed in her processor. It wasn't much of one, but it was something.

"I say, fine by me," she said firmly. "If and when Astrotrain and his little band of nobodies finally land on Cybertron, we try to intercept them so we can schedule a meeting. He should agree to that... even Megatron and Starscream agreed to a few. We let 'Bee try talking, because if that works then, great. Meanwhile, I'll lead a team, hidden with blaster, ready to take down 'Con leader wanna-be and his 'loyal henchmen' if 'Bee got it wrong."

"I'm down," Bumblebee said. He shrugged a little, but at the same time he looked perfectly serious too.

Arcee smiled at him then, the sort of proud, near disbelieving sort of smile she had showed him since they'd fought together in the war's final decade or so. He was truly ready to do exactly what he said he'd do. She realized then with the same start with which she'd realized it every other time. He'd learned so much from Prime... Everyone still said so sometimes, and they'd surely say it far more soon.

"Hey," she said, her hand rested on her young teammate's shoulder panel, trying hard to relieve him of the worry she knew he felt, even though he certainly wasn't showing a hint of it. "So far this was just a couple of 'cons and some still unsubstantiated threat. We all know it. We aren't back in the war yet, and if we get this right we never will be.

Her bondmate joined then then, standing beside her with a small smile on his face-plate, and showing easily that he too had be boosted in confidence by her words. He rested an arm lightly around her, smiling when she leaned just as lightly against him, watching with her as 'Bee and Ratchet walked off toward Speedbreaker, who stood across the room talking quietly with Firestorm.

"You think she's be okay?" Arcee asked, her optics gesturing in Firestorm's direction. And she saw her mate frown immediately.

"She will be," he said. "It might be awhile, but of course she will eventually."

"I always thought they'd been like us, her and Soundwave," Arcee muttered, still disbelieving over the mess. "Two more very different sorts of bots, who somehow made it anyway... another post war success story. They were going to be bondmates any day... or at least my credits were on exactly that."

"I thought so too," Knockout answered back, clearly sad himself. "Even if I did have my doubts at first of course."

"Soundwave isn't here," Arcee scanned the gathered group of bots, now all talking to each other in small groups around the room. She hadn't seen him earlier, and sure enough, still didn't.

"He may well be on patrol this afternoon," Knockout answered back. He looked back at Firestorm and smiled a little with something close to uncertain assurance. "He's not avoiding Firestorm. Duty still comes first and he knows that. And they don't hate each other."

"I know," Arcee replied. And she shook her head, before she looked back at her mate and mumbled , "I just wanted to have a word with him today... or possibly kick his aft well into next year..."

########

Firestorm was suddenly very much awake in the dark of night. And she was shaking from fright. She looked around her recharge room, from the position – sitting nearly straight upright on the recharge station – that she'd inexplicably woken up in, and saw little more then the darkness of the room around her. The young bot stayed that lay a moment, just shaking hard because she couldn't stop herself. And finally, she lay back down again.

Still, she was tense and unnerved. She certainly couldn't recharge . Just closing her optics made her shudder so horribly. Firestorm could not forget the dream she'd had – the most horrific she could ever remember in her life. And that included youngling-hood. She'd dreamed of war and battle, or armed Autobot soldiers firing high powered blasters at unseen enemies in the streets of her still inhabited city. Bombs had dropped from the sky, and explosions levelled buildings instantly to rubble piles in all directions. Soundwave had been nowhere, and after searching and searching through the war torn streets, she'd realized he'd never existed... that she'd only imagined he ever once had, because she'd been lonely.

Firestorm got up from the recharge station. And admittedly she felt like little more then a small and helpless youngling, as she pulled the curtains aside to peek outside the window. But the dream had been so real... she had to know it truly hadn't been. And she sighed loudly with relief when she saw streetlights and the road down below. There, across the road from her window, and ways below it, was the roof of another housing building. And in a couple of the units there was dim lights on as bots went about their business late at night inside. There was no sign of rubble and explosions – no bots with blasters. She leaned against the window sighing once again.

The dream – more like a nightmare she supposed – came back to her though as she stood looking down from the window. And now she remembered what had happened next. She found herself suddenly close to back in the dream again, just as though she was still trapped within it...

 _She stood in the street, explosions everywhere and someone... some nameless bot she'd never seen before and would never see again, screamed at her to run. She tried hard to make her feet comply – to run away toward the west, because that way seemed the safest, as a fallen structure – her own housing building – had crumbled to ruin and blocked her path to the north and the east, and huge bombs were falling to the south, shaking the ground for miles. Her feet though would not move, and she felt a strange weight in her arms. She looked down then to see an offlined youngling – a first frame newborn, laying just the way he'd died while she'd carried him. And the baby looked just like Soundwave... with her bright blue optics._

Firestorm gasped loudly, now sure of exactly what had woken her up, and made her sit up straight, before she even had. She stumbled backwards a few steps until she bumbled against the recharge station, and sat down on its edge. She wanted to recharge again. It was still hours until morning, and is she was going to reopen her paint shop for business, she needed the rest first. But she'd simply couldn't and she knew it would be pointless to try. She was upset and she was still shaking, even as she held her hand for a moment over her spark chamber, trying hard to convince herself that her still unborn youngling was perfectly fine.

She stood up again. And for a while she just sat in the dim lit living room, drinking a small cup of energon she'd warmed for herself hoping that would help her, and listened to the walls creak and plumbing rattle. She'd never lived alone before, and even after at least ten long days of struggling to do so, the noises in the night – and being an old building the place was certainly full of noises – played tricks on her mind in the dark. She heard a slight rattling noise, which quickly got loudly and nearly right above her, before it moved quickly, and still noisily somewhere behind her wall. And Firestorm looked around her quickly, holding her energon container tightly, struggling to identify the sound. A wash station, reason told her, in the apartment above hers. Water dripping hard into metal flooring before descending downwards through pipes inside the building's walls. It made sense and it almost made her feel better. She'd heard that noise a million times by then. But reason quickly left her, and still so shaken by the dream, she wondered if their could actually have been srcaplets living in the wall somewhere.

She felt a strange movement, small but certainly noticeable, behind her chest panel. Her newspark, active now that she was, and moving fast within her spark chamber. Firestorm raised a hand again, the one not holding her container, to rest against it for a moment. She tapped lightly against the metal of her chest panel, the way she had watched Speedbreaker do during her own current carrying and the one before, curious to see if she could could cause something to happen, as Speedy insisted was possible. And sure enough it felt exactly like the motion inside had sped up further in response to her tapping. She marvelled at the fact that she was already sensing anything at all in the way of movements, and the obvious awareness within the unborn newspark. She was amazed he was already big enough for that. But then she had carried for awhile before she'd even known.

Firestorm wondered for the first time then, if she was truly right to keep him. Surely there would be bots who would tell her not to, and maybe they were right. And she thought perhaps she ought to think of giving him up. Her thoughts turned to Windstorm, who she seemed to think of less and less each year. And she knew at once, he would insist and possibly demand she do exactly that. He'd say she couldn't do it, or at least she shouldn't – not because he didn't love, but because he did. And he'd love the newspark too, and insist on more for it than a young single carrier whose best she could do was not half as good as those who might want younglings and still be without them. She shook her head, took a sip from her container and wondered if in her current situation her brother could have been convinced to hear 'no.' She had no idea, and she supposed it didn't matter now anyway – but still she valued his opinion, just as though he still had one. The newspark moved again however just a moment later, faster and stronger than before. And she knew just as well as she had the day she'd first discovered he existed, that she could not possibly give him up.

There as a loud bang in the hallway, not far from her door. And voices yelled and shouted for a moment, followed by another louder bang. Clearly there was someone – a couple of someones – out there arguing again. That seemed to happen often, and a few on her floor alone were certainly known for it. But she wondered that night, for the first time ever, and much to her terror and dismay, what she might possibly do if one of those yelling bots was armed with a weapon.

Her mind wandered back to the nightmare again. And she shuddered harder than before, feeling suddenly so cold all alone her in dark and creaky home. She missed Soundwave more then ever at that moment, wanting to tell him about the dream she'd had, and to hear him say that she was fine and so was their child. She wanted him to laugh at her for thinking there could be scraplets in the wall, because then she'd laugh to, certain he was right. She wanted to hug him again... to hear him say he loved her.

She had activated her commlink before she'd even realized she'd meant to. And on the other end of the comm-call she heard the bleeping noise of an alert. She tried to drop the cal then, berating herself for her stupidity, but the call was picked up. She always hadn't thought it would be.

"Fire...storm...?" Soundwave's voice said hesitantly, on the other end somewhere. He certainly wasn't angry. He sounded so... sad. And very wide awake.

"Hi," she answered him, not sure what she'd planned to say exactly if he'd picked up the call.

"I... I had a dream..." she mumbled hopelessly, shaking all over again, and tears of coolant threatening now. "A terrible nightmare... about the war. The city was just... gone. And... and our youngling was... dead... There's someone outside screaming in the hall and something banging in the wall, and..."

"Firestorm..." Soundwave answered slowly, calm as he most often seemed to be. But strangely he didn't say anything else."

"I... I still miss you," Firestorm said.

"I miss you too, Firestorm..." she understood now that he hadn't answered her before because he'd been crying much to hard to try. "I'm sure I'll always miss you."

"I'm... sorry for bothering you. It's so late at night..."

"I don't mind. I am glad you comm'd me. I didn't think you ever would again, but you can sometimes, if you ever need anything."

"I..." Firestorm began to say something else. She wanted to say so many things, and she couldn't decided fast enough exactly what to say first, or if she would say it at all. But her own tears returned then, far worse then before. And she dropped the call quickly and without another word, choosing instead to curl up on the sofa crying until she lost all awareness as she dropped into recharge.

########

"Recharge station... desk... window," Blastwave said, motioning around the small room and vaguely toward the things he mentioned, as he did so. He shrugged a little, and gestured around at the other side of the room. "Shelves... holovid player." The youngling shrugged again, wandering slowly across the room, the pull open the curtains. And he gestured down to the roadway from the fourteenth floor of building six.

"It's not much yet," he went on, with another shrug. "We've... all seen a recharge room."

"We have," Soundwave answered, looking down at his youngling brother, only slightly less unsure how to talk him now as he had been the day they'd first met. "But this is your recharge room, on our home world. And that makes it worth being excited for..."

"Yeah," Blast' said. He smiled for a second, before looking thoughtful. "It's still hard to believe I'm here. Carrier says I'll join the school soon..."

The youngling looked down at the floor, clearly uneasy - or at least Soundwave thought unease was what he saw. He wanted to say something to his brother. But he didn't know what he should say or even wanted to. The youngling bot looked so much like him – sharing so many of their features from their carrier of course. And he reminded him just a little of his younger self. But the youngling was indeed still just that – a youngling. And Soundwave had never been good with then in general, or at least he felt like he certainly wasn't.

The idea of a brother was one he'd never once considered ever in his life, until he met Blast' still so recently. And to see a bot who was almost a smaller, youngling version of himself, was a thing that he was still far from used to. And neither of them were very good at simple conversation, so they just kind of watched each other quite a lot. But still, both were intrigued by the other's existence – Soundwave knew he was, and it was so easy to guess that Blast' was to.

The youngling bot sat down suddenly on the floor. And he set to work without a word about it, opening a crate of datapads and other random items, which he then started unpacking onto his shelves. And Soundwave, unsure how to restart conversation of even if he should, simply turned and left the room.

Wandering slowly down the hall, back the way he'd come in the first place when the youngling had led him, he found his carrier, unpacking a few things of her own – just one single crate of them – in the living room. And he sat down, half to to fully uneasy, at a simple table in the corner.

"Your home is... very nice," he said, awkward around his own carrier, and not liking it at all.

Her home really was a decent home – still close to empty except for a few pieces of obviously second hand furniture, which bots regularly gave to new refugees as they updates their own after years of becoming established on the planet. And the walls were still completely bare. But still it looked like a real home, and Soundwave was glad she and his siblings had one.

He wished though that they could go back to the first days of their reunion – to the endless laughter and the long days of visits in parks and his apartment, and even in the marketplace. But things were different now, and they'd gotten that way abruptly. They still visited as much as they could. They'd joyfully shared in Shortwave's excitement when her family came up so fast on the housing list. He'd showed her the city – and warned her of anyplace to be avoided past dark. But there was far less laughter, and less real conversation. The two – it seemed, had little left to talk about.

"I saw Firestorm this morning," Shortwave said suddenly, instead of any comment at all about the apartment. And Soundwave, who had been trying his hardest to forget his sadness at the simplest mention of her name, dropped both his gaze and his shoulders a little. "I went to her shop because I want to let Blast' be professionally painted before he joins a classroom soon. I asked if she would possibly do Light' too, seeing as she's not a typical and easy to paint bot. She said she'd be delighted to try to paint her pretty... She invited me and your siblings over for a visit. I told her of course, and I'd love to visit with her."

"I'm glad you and Firestorm are going to keep in touch and be friends," Soundwave told her, meaning it completely.

One thing, above so many others, that had devastated him in leaving Firestorm the night he'd left, was that it would later break his carrier's spark as much as it broke his own. Shortwave had come to love her quickly and he knew it. She's know her grand-creation too. And he smiled just a little to himself in knowing that.

He was stunned – not to mention entirely shaken and utterly floored when Shortwave, standing up from her own chair at her small table before he even noticed her do so, smacked him hard with an open palm, clean across his face-plate.

"Carrier?" Soundwave questioned, sure he must surely have sounded ridiculous in his near stammering confusion.

He was most certainly not accustomed to being slapped. No bot on Cybertron, and definitely not a single one on the warship, would have dared to challenge him in any way, let alone full on slap him. And so, for a good long moment, he just sat exactly where he was, optics wide with baffled confusion, and barely daring to move, least she decide to smack him again and harder. His metal still stung from the first good smack.

"I think as a carrier I have every right to smack my own grown youngling good, when he's being a particular sort of Primus fragged idiot!" Shortwave said, before she sat back down, nonchalantly and clearly exasperated. "And that's no less than that lovely girl of yours should have given you."

Soundwave was about to say something in reply. He wanted to admit that he deserved that he and knew it. But his carrier just glared at him, a look of love and warning all mixed into one as surely only one's carrier could give, no matter the age of the bot receiving the look. And she was speaking again, before he could even try to.

"She's thinking she ought to close the paint shop. You were the first bot to believe in her, and everything she achieved when the world said she wouldn't, she did because you knew she could! Don't think I couldn't see that she's been crying for days straight... all while carrying. You tore that poor bot's spark to pieces, and stomped on what was left of it."

"I... suppose she told you everything..." Soundwave muttered, suddenly horrified, and shameful enough to wish he could off line that very moment. He knew how much Firestorm had come to trust his carrier so quickly.

"She certainly did," Shortwave answered. She wasn't glaring with her anger anymore. And calmly now she reached across the table to rest a hand against his shoulder panel.

"Soundwave," she asked quietly. "How did I raise a genius youngling, who could still be so insanely idiotic?"

"We were never having younglings, Carrier," Soundwave said, just slightly defensive now because he didn't know what else to be – he didn't like defensiveness and it never had become him well. "Firestorm knew that. She was fine and we were happy."

"Yes you were happy," Shortwave said. "But she wasn't fine. Soundwave, I may have lived for decades on a ship, but I didn't always. I've had friends in my life, and a few slaggin' good ones. I know the look of a young bot who wants something so bad she's afraid to even think of the thing she wants because she might start crying for seemingly no reason and be discovered in her lie of no longer wanting it. That something is usually a youngling. Don't think I didn't see that look in her optics too. And firestorm loved you enough to stay and commit even after you said no. And now that it's happened anyway, regardless of exactly how, it's absolute cruelty to assume for even a second she might just give that up because you said so... and then simply decide to part ways when she, quite understandably, refused."

"Firestorm was fine," Soundwave repeated, speaking truly in denial now, because just understanding how much she'd really always wanted the one thing he'd so calmly suggested they simply terminate, made him feel as though his own spark had surely been torn from his frame right along with hers.

"Would it be so bad, having a youngling in your life?" Shortwave asked him. And she smiled just a little, always wistfully. "One who will love you no matter how many foolish things you do, and trust you with it's tiny life and smile at you enough to make the worst days good again. They're lovely, I can assure you. I've had three."

"I can't raise a youngling," Soundwave answered. He lowered his optics tears of his utter devastation fell before he could even hope to stop them. "How can I, with an unfeeling brute for a creator? How can I love the poor tiny thing unconditionally, when the only 'fair discipline' I know is to hit her until her tiny face-plate bleeds, and she thinks I'm the monster he was. How can I tell her that feels are fine and it's okay to have them all, when I still barely understand my own and I never will. And what am I supposed to do when she comes home beaten and injured by younglings on the playground because carrier murdered millions in a time of war and served the losing side. Firestorm knew it was impossible!"

"You told her you love the newspark..."

"I do love the newspark. I'll live the rest of my life with the guilt of saying it should simply die like it was never here at all. I said that without thinking. It's... my child. One I never dreamed I'd ever have, and I love her as much I love Firestorm. I wish I could be with them... to meet her when she's born and to show off photofiles like any proud creator... Firestorm called me last night. She was shaken up and lonely. I think it just made us both miss each other again..."

"You miss each other because your sparks were meant for one another," Shortwave said. She smiled a little and shook her head. "So many bots never find their 'one true partner... though I do think a crazy war that tore the world into factions only made things worse when it comes to love. I never did find mine. But you did... just the fact that she doesn't hate you for your complete lack of any good judgment in the handling of your little... situation, ought to prove that."

"I don't believe I've ever been so sad before," Soundwave muttered, still looking at his carrier's apartment floor. Watching as the dull grey metal of the tiles before to waver and bend, as tears filled his optics again. "I've never missed someone so much."

"You'll never be the perfect creator," Shortwave said seriously. "No one will. But you can learn as well as anyone. And knowing exactly the kind you'd never want to be is knowledge you can use. You know you don't want to be a monstrous brute to a youngling, so don't be one. Love the child as much as you love his carrier and you'll be admired, not feared."

"This isn't what I thought I wanted," Soundwave mumbled. His tears fell still harder. But Shortwave only looked at him when he raised his optics anyway, understanding on her face-plate without a hint of any judgment.

"No," she said firmly. "But it's exactly what you're getting anyway."


	19. Chapter 19

Sitting on a bench in the front row of the stands and facing out toward the racetrack, Arcee smiled – if not somewhat anxiously – watching a group of youngling 'junior league' racers, driving the track. And she leaned her head against Knockout's shoulder panel, smiling far brighter just as soon as he, quite predictably, wrapped an arm gently around the middle of her frame. Her anxiety mounted quickly though, taking some of her smile away, as several of the little racers – their own youngling included, roared around the tightest bend of the track, while barely slowing down to make the curve. And she sat up straight again, her optics glued to the red and light blue 'Smart' car, among the multicoloured alt modes until she had cleared the corner.

"I still haven't decided how I feel about her racing," Arcee muttered, shaking her head a little even as her bondmate pulled her playfully against his frame again.

"Come on, Arcee," Knockout answered, cheerfully, and just as confidant as ever. He gestured with a hand, which waved enthusiastically, toward their youngling on the track. "She loves it. And she's good too. You see how well she's driving!"

Cybershock certainly was good. She was close to youngest of the junior league racers – second only to Hotwire. And her alt-mode, despite how much she'd loved it for its uniqueness from the moment she'd first chosen it to scan, was hardly a vehicle most would usually associate at all with racing. But she could drive just as fast as many slighter older younglings could. And could think fast, handling corners and anticipating the next one, all while watching other racers on the track, avoiding others when she needed to and passing when she could.

And she certainly did love it too. Her creator was right about that. She chattered on about racing just as much as she chattered easily about science (a subject she had loved since she was still a later first frame.) And on track she laughed with other racers as they all engaged in light sparked trash talk to each other, mostly all just for the fun and silliness of it.

Switchgear - who Arcee and Knockout had happily brought along with them while Bulkhead worked on the final inspections of the last completed housing building – leaned forward excitedly in her place on the bench beside Arcee, cheering loudly as Hotwire began to catch up to the the racer he'd been chasing for a lap and a half.

"It looks like it might be fun to race," she mused smiling.

Switch', Arcee knew, had never been a speedster sort of bot. She was much more of a scrapper, usually fighting for fun against other younglings her size or even bigger, who enjoyed it for sport. But she'd never been one to turn down a challenge either. And she constantly wondered exactly what she could do. Knockout, of course grinned at once.

"So, practice on the track sometime with Cybershock and Hotwire," he said. "Those two practice all the time. Usually I'll time them."

"You think I could...?"

Knockout just grinned brighter, before he answered laughing, "Any bot with wheels can do it."

Arcee had continued to watch her own youngling, out on the track, intently. But finally she dared to take her optics off her for a moment. And she looked around the stands behind her, smiling to see a crowd close to half filling the benches, and with numerous other youngling bots among them. Most bots – she knew – were there early for the main event, a 'masters' class race starting later in he afternoon. But 'juniors' was gaining a decent following too among the city, if for no other reason than bots in general found younglings just plain cute to watch, while racing just like big and faster bots.

It still made Arcee smile so often, even years after the war had ended, to see so many little bots on her home world again. The population had grown well on board the refugee ships. And it was growing better still on the planet itself. There were nine junior racers on the track at present, and perhaps three times that in the stands. And those together made up only a handful of the total already in the city.

Arcee spotted Hotwire's twin siblings, Hubcap and Sparkplug, sitting just a couple rows up, on either side of Speedbreaker, chattering away to one another, over their carrier's seated frame, while she held her youngest child, Tailfin, on her lap and smiled. The twins cheerfully shared a small bag of sweets, passing them back and forth, over speedy's knees, and once offering one to Tailfin, who reached for the sweet giggling loudly, before he mistakenly tried to eat it still in its wrapper.

A good ways away sat another pair of twins – Takeoff and Runway, identical miniature fighter jet alt modes, who certainly were decent young bots, but well known all the same for their constantly rambunctious behaviour and their tendency to egg each other on, and cause it to continue. They sat quietly though, at least for the moment on their bench, chucking a large metal bolt of all things, back and forth between them, while they watched each other's optics intently and didn't say a word.

Takeoff and Runway could talk perfectly very well. Arcee remembered them clearly from their days in her early learning classroom. But they never seemed to talk to each other out loud when it was just them conversing together. They 'talked' with near perfectly telepathy, staying entirely silent until they suddenly each burst out laughing over something no other bot would ever know. And Arcee wondered again, as she often had, why they could do so, while Hubcap and Sparkplug used words like anyone else. She guessed then that perhaps it made sense after all. The flyer twins were rare split sparks, while the grounder pair were not.

There was Turbocharge as well, who Arcee knew as one of Knockout's favourite and long time patients - sitting down at the far end of the front row, with the entirety of his family. Arcee quickly counted eight younglings – Turbo included – beside, in front of, and on the laps of their carrier and creator. Ten, she realized quickly, correcting herself when she remembered hearing from Knockout that two siblings were among the junior racers themselves And she noted, to her sudden joy, that she saw no sign of Turbo's walking frame anywhere.

Arcee looked up again and in the other direction. And she was surprised to see a young bot she knew was Soundwave's brother, sitting on the stands just few rows up from Turbocharge. He was silent, and watching the track with a strange staring look. And his red optics were the first pair she had ever seen on a youngling bot. And though she would never dream of saying so, that particular youngling unnerved her just slightly, somehow.

"I'm not sure I ever caught that one's name," she said to her bondmate And though she did feel slightly bad for that, it still seemed perfectly fair, because she had only met him once and briefly. The kid had barely said a word to her the day she'd met him.

Knockout looked over in the direction she was looking in. And he smiled at once.

"That's Blastwave," he said, gesturing now with his optics at the winged dark blue youngling.

"If anyone's ever wondered what Soundwave was like as a kid... I'd imagine that might be pretty close," Arcee muttered, chuckling a little, as she watched the youngling, still staring silently and close to motionless toward the track, watching with expressionless and almost calculating interest.

"The kid's a bit odd I suppose" Knockout said, confirming exactly what Arcee had been silently thinking. "But he really is a perfectly nice youngling. The whole family is actually quite a lovely little family."

Arcee found herself almost startled by that description. And instantly she wondered why. She'd met Shortwave before, had talked to her for quite a while and even shared a chuckle and some genuine smiles with the bot. Still, as she realized only then while talking with her mate, the idea of 'lovely' bots had just never quite clicked in her head when she considered the family of the bot that Soundwave had once been. She reminded herself then, quite firmly, that Soundwave himself had proved her wrong about him after his defection. Why, she wondered, couldn't his family actually be decent, if not a little strange?

Shortwave appeared then, creeping slowly and carefully along the front of the stands and past the railing between it and the track, with her youngest child in her arms. And Arcee gasped out loud, though still quietly, at seeing the child, still shocked at seeing her, though she had already once before. But Lightwave had been near recharge at that time – laying still over her carrier's knees - making the full extent of her condition far less obvious at a glance The youngling, clearly somewhere near the age of her own, was painted in the darkest blue and highlighted with and black and purple just like the rest of her family. But her head flopped forward against her carrier's panelling as she was carried, before flopping terribly to one side as she stepped too hard over the metal ground. The two tiny hands seemed to stay in tiny fists and the arms and legs bent, clearly close to painfully, from wires that seemed to pull them into such awkward bends.

"Poor baby," Arcee muttered, looking away from the child and back to her own, so as not to offend the newly arrived family. That little one she knew, was clearly damaged far more then anything she'd ever imagined could survive. And she looked urgently at her mate then, anxious and hopeful. "Do... you think anyone can do anything...?"

"Ratchet had begun to work her case already, before he left on that 'con hunting mission," Knockout explained. And clearly so much more familiar with the family, he smiled at them all brightly, including the very damaged youngling. To Arcee's surprise she heard the poor youngling bot make a tiny buzzing whirring noise under a quiet intake. It wasn't much at all, but still it was a sound. "He's trying hard, as you can imagine. And he's got my case, though very different from hers, as some form of hope... A youngling like that though, she's so medically fragile and weak. It would be so easy to do more harm than good, in much of anything we try to do for her...

"Shortwave clearly loves her, no matter what happens now..." Arcee mused. And she found herself smiling again, as her optics wandered back to the little family, and she watched Shortwave hold her damaged child's hand gently, unbending it slowly to relieve the constantly pulling wires she herself had learned so much about from her own mate's case. She watched the carrier pull the youngling tighter against her frame, clearly wanting to hug her like one would any youngling, while they sat watching the races. Knockout nodded quickly, his agreement obvious.

"You look lovely today, by the way," Knockout said, observing just that with a smile.

"Don't I always?" Arcee asked right back, pretending to be almost offended.

"Well, yes, of course," Knockout held up a hand in clear surrender and made a show of thinking hard, considering his words so as not to verbally dig himself into a hole. "But still you look... exceptionally good today."

Arcee just smiled at that.

She'd shined her paint that morning after a good long wash in the wash station, and had even let Knockout buff her to a brighter shine afterwards. He'd brought home some light scented wax for her several days before – clearly trying hard to relieve her strange edginess and slight though still clearly obvious lingering depression with a small but thoughtful gift. And she'd finally felt like trying some, instantly surprised with just how much difference a good coat of nice wax could make to her mood.

"Thank you for being understanding," she said slowly. "For being patient in dealing with this moody pile of bolts."

"You're my moody pile of bolts," Knockout told her, grinning. "And I'll always understand."

"What?" both bondmates said in the very same second, when Switchgear burst into giggles of laughter.

"I'm gonna to tell Cybershock later that her creators are weird," Switch answered still laughing a little. And Knockout laughed right back, himself.

"She'd only agree with you," he said, smiling as though he was somehow proud of himself. "She knows we're weird."

"That she does," Arcee agreed, before she laughed a little, adding jokingly, "and embarrassing her with the fact has become a part time hobby of ours."

She and her mate both loved Switch' like she was family. And they knew the little green youngling would always hold a place in their sparks, right along with the place held by their own child. And so Arcee hugged her tightly then, pulling her against her frame with an arm around her, as she so often did. And Switch' just grinned, instantly hugging her back.

"Final lap," Knockout said, grinning again, as the youngling racers on the track did their best to speed up, trying for their final bursts of speed for the finish.

The four in front, Cybershock among them, vied hard for the win, each one driving just a fast as they possibly could. Engines revved and roared. And tires squealed a little, as they steered left and right, all struggling to pass each other.

Speedtrap, who had been in a close second place position before Cybershock managed to get herself past him, yelled with anger when she did so. And Arcee stood up quickly from the bench, dismayed and horrified, when he, clearly quiet deliberately, spayed rough metal dust and pebbles into her youngling's headlights by spinning his back tires. She watched Cybershock, as she swerved hard to the left and then to the right, almost smashing into the forth place racer – Turbocharge's brother, and certainly not a youngling with any part in Speedtrap's needless bullying – before she managed to correct herself and and fall back in behind him.

"That was cheating," Arcee muttered, displeased, and offended for her youngling. And she shook her head, far from impressed as she watched her finish forth, while the bully called Speedtrap made second.

"I'll find time to have a word with him," Knockout promised, assuring her with patient confidence, even as he frowned, clearly less than pleased himself.

Arcee just nodded, watching her youngling, as she transformed back to her bot mode along the others now at the edge of the track. The little bot rubbed, with a slightly pained expression, at her headlights with sat the fronts of her shoulder panels, and frowned at the scuff marks caused by the dust spray to the front of her body.

"Did you see that," Cybershock remarked loudly to Hotwire, as the pair of them left the track, and jumped easily over the railing the surrounded it, before climbing up into the stands. She threw her arms up, clearly exasperated, and glared at the retreating form of Speedtrap, who was hurrying away high into the upper rows of benches. "Look what he did to my finish!"

Arcee, though she was certainly still beyond mad at the youngling who had needlessly flung metal dust at her youngling daughter, chuckled just a little out loud, at just how much Cybershock sounded like her creator in that second. She watched Knockout, as he chuckled just a little himself, holding out his arms to their little bot, who squeezed in between her parents, and let him inspect a small but still clearly painful and deep scratch across her headlight casing.

"It's nothing serious," he said, assuring her with a smile. "Self repair will fix that up in hours.

"I'll shine you up tonight," Arcee promised the youngling, smiling a little, and watching as she instantly smiled right back.

"Nice driving today, my girl," Knockout said, smiling at the youngling bot, before he turned to look behind him at Hotwire, now sitting with his smiling family. "You too, Hotwire."

"I wonder if it might be possible to set something up for the little flyers..." Arcee mused out loud, after looking for a good moment between the racetrack and the small handful of miniature plane modes that were sitting around.

Takeoff and Runway, it seemed were often at the track just watching with interest. And now there was Blastwave, who she reasoned might enjoy participation too. Firestorm's own newspark, would not be tiny forever. And he would surely fly one day, and want something to take part in too.

"They could race above the track if they wanted too..." Cybershock suggested grinning. She'd plopped herself down beside her creator just as soon as she'd come back to the stands, and now sat hugging his arm for no reason at all but that she was the ever affectionate child who still wanted hugs from her parents. Of course he hugged her right back.

"Their races would be short though," Arcee mused, chuckling a little. She knew well that even as younglings, the flyers were roughly three times as fast as any grounders.

"So, they do more laps," Cybershock suggested. She was looking toward the flyer twins now, and grinning, clearly about to suggest to them out loud that they should indeed race if the wanted to.

Runway however – at least Arcee was quite sure it was Runway, though even when she'd had them in her classroom almost daily it had been nearly impossible to remember which was which by their paint highlight colour – stood up staring back.

"You'd never time us," he said, in Knockout's direction, grinning with youngling confidence.

"Yeah," Takeoff exclaimed, standing up beside his brother. He smacked his twin roughly across the backs of his shoulder panels, and exclaimed with a laugh, "We're the fastest youngling bots on Cybertron!" Both flyer twins made their way closer to the little family, and grinned brighter.

"We'll fly even faster when we're bigger, too!" Runway exclaimed. And he jumped up and down on the benches with obvious excitement. "Someday... if we practice and we both try hard enough... we'll fly just as fast as Starscream!"

"Yeah!" Takeoff cheered, clearly more excited now then ever. "And he was the fastest flyer ever."

"Fast enough to break the sound barrier before he was ever half way to as fast as he could have gone according to the records!" Runway said. "And... it wasn't just speed either. He could fire his weapons from the air... while he flew upside down!"

"No one ever stood in Starscream's way!"

"No one could ever could have caught him. And anyway, Cybertron feared the roar of his engines!"

The two young flyers walked away again now heading further up the rows of benches, with clearly so little interest in racing on the track. And they continued, as they went, to quote facts and figures to each other with grins across their face-plates.

Arcee, was quite taken aback as she sat with her family and Switchgear on the bench. And for a moment she just sat shaken her head, near horrified.

"Starscream was a monster with a list of atrocities just as long as that of Megatron himself," she muttered frowning. "He's murdered younglings, tortured innocent civilians, and bombed cities. And those younglings see him as some kind of.. hero or something. How can they think it's a good thing to want to be anything like him."

"They don't want to be like Starscream," Knockout answered back, his tone calm and strangely understanding. "They just want to fly like he could..."

"Like it makes a bit of difference," Arcee grumbled. She still felt some days like her bitterness over the war – which she still felt far too strongly sometimes – would never leave her completely. And now was one such time.

"Those younglings are neutrals," Knockout reminded her calmly. "They were born on a ship, and the only home world they'll ever know is the one we're still rebuilding. The war will never mean the same thing to them, or anyone as young as them, as it does to us. They are also flyers in a world where they will always be the rare minority..."

"I guess it does only make sense they would look up to the greatest flying bot the world ever had," Arcee muttered back. And she smiled her understanding then, though she still didn't exactly like it much. "And Starscream did come to understand that he'd been wrong... especially in the final hours of his life."

She'd added the last bit mostly for the interest of Cybershock and Switch still beside her, as well as Hotwire and his slightly younger twin siblings, all of whom had clearly been listening to her intently interested in a story they'd never heard before, and deserving of facts before they were lost to confused embellishments – just like any stories that only seemed to grow and grow.

"Can we stay and watch the 'masters' class races?" Cybershock asked, after a moment in which they'd all just sat around cheerfully among the now steady growing crowd. Switch looked up at well, hopefully and interested. And Arcee, who was going to agree at once, stayed silent instead when knockout spoke up.

"Of course we can," he told the younglings, grinning. He pulled Cybershock playfully against his frame for a second, shaking her a little, and making her giggle as she'd always done in response.

"I'll.. be back in a moment," Knockout said then, standing up from his place on the bench carefully, and pausing for a second to look up far higher into the stands, where Speedtrap sat alone and scowling at no one.

Climbing steps was still a tricky thing for him to do, because there was much much call to do it on a daily basis. The rows of benches at the track was about the only place it might ever have really have come at all, usually. But he and his family usually sat in the front row, mostly for the sake of saving him from dealing with the climbing in the first place.

Still, he could climb up there if he wanted to. And as long as he held carefully to the edge of the benches, for lack of any handrails, he could certainly do it safely enough. Regardless, Arcee turned around to watch him, worried he might just fall, wishing she could help him instead of risking such an accident, but well aware that her stubborn mate would only have refused. And she was relieved and pleased at once, when she saw some kind and smiling refugee extend a hand to him when indeed he did trip and stumble on the seventh step or so – not laughing or mocking, but simply helping before he left go of him again. The two even appeared to share a friendly chuckle.

Finally, Knockouts at himself down in the stands again, next to the bullying youngling he'd gone to talk with, making himself comfortable on the bench beside him without even being invited. And Arcee watched a moment as the two began conversing quietly. She watched her mate as he gave the youngling bot a good telling off. And she smiled, still watching as he so clearly listened patiently as the little bot spoke in reply.

* * *

Despite her situation Firestorm was having a good day. It was sure not wonderful by any means. But the best she'd had yet in the time she'd been alone. Ratchet had been right in pushing her to get back to her paint shop – because business had boomed since she'd been back. Staying on her feet all day, painting bots while carrying was certainly exhausting. But she'd quickly found that she didn't mind. The work kept her busy, and the exhaustion of it let her recharge well at night. And she'd been spending time with friends too. They would stop by often to drag her on out with them to the market place, or to the racetrack to watch races with them.

It was early evening now, and she was, quite predictably still at work. But her last client was gone, pleased and grinning over the racing stripes she'd completed for him. And she found herself humming a little to her unborn newspark, as she tidied up the shop. She felt him wake up, as she put away her paint sprayer and tape. And by the time she'd begun to quickly organize paint jars in a high cupboard, he was spinning faster then ever around her own spark. She giggled at that, smiling. And she began to hum a new song instead, just to see if perhaps he might like it. He certainly seemed to. Because his spin slowly just a little just as though he was listening to her. And she smiled brighter then before, silently thinking intently of just how much the already loved him, and wondering if he would understand that too. She smiled again, when her spark chamber warmed just a little, in what she guessed was the tiny life's answer back to her.

"You'll have a great life, my... youngling," she said out loud but quietly. And she paused in the middle of her shop's empty storeroom, realizing only then she had someone never once thought about a name for the baby.

"What am I going to call you?" she asked both him and herself, frowning a little as she considered. And she sat down on a storage crate to think much harder on the matter then, as well as to rest. It occurred to her, for just a moment, that perhaps she would call him 'Windstorm', named for her brother. But that didn't seem as right to her as she knew it might have once, the more carefully she considered.

"I'll decide soon," she promised the newspark, smiling again, as she realized she still had plenty of time. And she rested a hand against her closed spark chamber. "I'll pick a good name, I promise."

She stood up again from the crate, put away the last of her supplies and crossed the room to turn out the storeroom lights. Then, frowning when she heard the fans, still running in the paint room next to it, she hurried to shut them down before leaving. The buzzer, placed above the shop's sliding door, to alert her with a noise when it slid open, buzzed loudly, just as the fan shut down. And Firestorm looked around her momentarily startled, sure that it was clear from the outside, that the paint shop was closed for business. She hurried to the front when she heard footsteps in the atrium.

"I'm sorry," she called out before she'd even made her away around the dividing wall and out of the back rooms. "I'm closed for the night. I can book you in for an appointment if you would..."

Her words died in the air though, and she never did finish speaking. Because Soundwave stood in the atrium, just in front of the now closed door. And he smiled, nervous and clearly uncertainly at her, with a large and beautiful bunch of crystal flowers in his hands, held in front of him.

"Hi..." Firestorm said slowly, because she was unsure entirely of what else she should have said. She wondered exactly what it was he wanted. And she hated not knowing for sure.

"Hello, Firestorm" Soundwave said. He held out the flowers to her, his look hesitantly and hopeful. So much like a nervous youngling near tears and fearing rejection, it was almost comical. "These are... for you. From... a ridiculous fool who deserves whatever retribution you have in mind..."

He startled visibly as soon as she took one small step toward him, a look in his optics making it clear he feared she was about to smack him or worse. It was out of character, and it made her laugh because she couldn't help it. And soon she was smiling, a hesitant and uncertain smile of her own as she took a few more steps, hands at her sides, head nearly shaking with disbelief over his obvious relief when she made it clear she was not planning to slap him after all.

"They are beautiful, thank you," she said, gently taking the bunch of flowers before laying them carefully on the desk behind her. She stood in front of him, looking up into his face-plate and optics, as she'd grown so used to doing and blinked, angry and hopeful, confused and dismayed all at once. "What are you doing here?"

"I... wanted to see you..." Soundwave sounded so uneasy, unsure of himself like he'd never been before. He smiled just a little. "You... look well..." He looked her over, and smiled again slightly. "Carrying suits you well, Firestorm."

"Thank you." Firestorm left it at that, because she wasn't sure what else she wanted to say.

"Our... my... apartment is different now," she said, chattering almost idly because Soundwave wasn't speaking a word, clearly waiting for her to do so. And the silence was awkward. "It's almost ready for a youngling. I... I have most of what I need. And I moved things around to make it all fit. I... I can't get the recharging basket together. Ratchet gave me a very nice one as his gift to the baby. But... it's so complicated to set up..."

"I'll build it," Soundwave said, surprising her at once. She knew though that the offer certainly shouldn't have surprised her. They had not parted on terrible terms, and he had said he'd always be around to help her.

"I would... appreciate the help," she told him, smiling, after she'd considered for a second. She wanted to ask him how he'd been, if he'd been assigned his own housing yet, how his work was, or anything really.

She wanted to sit for hours just talking with him as they always had. And she knew he would if she asked him to. But she just couldn't, because she still missed him so much she knew she'd only be devastated all over again when they parted ways again. She watched him thought for a second or two, because she couldn't help it. And she was startled when he held his hands out to her. It was almost before she understood at all what she was doing, that she had offered him hers. And in only a second more, he'd pulled her toward him, holding her tightly against his much larger stronger frame, with her head resting exactly where she thought it belonged – against his lower chest panel.

"I... should not have walked away from you and our youngling," he said. His voice was shaky now with clearly threatening tears of coolant, as he hugged her tighter.

"A youngling whose life you assumed I might agree to terminate before he ever lived," Firestorm said back. She wanted to be angry, furious even, with him for that. And now that the matter was back out in the open she wanted to let him see that anger for himself. But she just couldn't bring herself to feel that fury, and it still didn't feel like the right feeling. It never had.

"Do you think I ever truly wanted that?" Soundwave asked. And Firestorm looked up at him, too see coolant in his optics by then.

"No," she said, meaning it entirely. "I know you had your reasons."

"And I was so very wrong," Soundwave answered, pulling her tightly against him again. Hugging her gently, when she suddenly broke into shaking sobs in her relief at just being so close to the familiar sound of his spark beat again.

"I meant it when I told you I love the newspark," he continued, walking with her carefully to some chairs against a wall, set out for use by the shop's waiting clients, and smiling at her hesitantly for just a moment before she moved bury her face-plate against his body panelling, crying harder. "If you would let me, I would like to come home... be the best bot I know how to be while you carry our child, and then love and care for her when she's born. Firestorm, I'm still so... affected by the war and so much besides that. And I fear now after so long, I'll never be better... not completely. But I can try. And I always will, if you'd only give me one more chance to get this right..."

"Yes," Firestorm answered. Her reply was formed in under a second. And she knew only after she'd spoken, that perhaps she should have made him wait and wonder for at least a moment or two. But it didn't matter, because in that second, with his arms tight around her and her face-plate still hidden against him, she knew she was right back where was meant to be.

"I have one more question for you, Firestorm," Soundwave said. But he said no more. And when she looked up at him, forcing herself to move away from the warmth of his metal panelling to do so, she saw him just shaking his head with dismay.

"I... can't ask you here. A paint shop is simply not suitable," he muttered, clearly so uneasy all over again. "Come flying with me!" He stopped again, and looked at her, concerned. "You are not... too tired from working to fly, are you?"

"No." Firestorm was tired. But then, she always was, and it seemed to come right along with carrying. She could not imagine she'd simply drift right into recharge then if she right right home to lay down and try to anyway.

She looked around then quickly, remembering the lovely bunch of flowers. And thinking quickly she set them up carefully, upright and supported in an old empty paint can on a self by the window. They would be fine that way all night she knew, and then in the morning she could put them into powered energon, in a decorative vase, where they should be fine forever. Then she shut off the lights, double checked and locked the empty shop behind her, and transformed into her flying alt mode on a main road which afforded just enough space to comfortably do so.

* * *

"Hey, Cyber-dweeb. Wait up," a voice called out across the empty playground. And Cybershock, who had been hurrying across it in her haste of get home to her carrier barely slowed, while she turned to look behind her, a feeling of dread rising up in her spark. She held the datapad she carried tighter in her hands.

Speedtrap. She'd thought she'd recognized both his voice and his insults. That bot, she decided with barely a thought about it, was surely the only one she know of, who was both mean enough and predictable enough to make fun of her name and think that was funny.

"What do you want, Speedtrap?" she asked him, still walking, and barely giving him even a glance.

She could have made fun of his name too, and a few rather silly and amusing possibilities occurred to her at once. But she refused to sink to his level. Cybershock had had enough of him. More then enough. She'd never had any reason to like him much at all and him deciding spray rocks and dust at her her the day before at the racetrack, followed directly by his sulking in the stands had been about enough.

"Maybe I just wanna walk with you, Cyber-dweeb," Speedtrap answered, his tone taunting her as he managed to catch up by running. "Little kids like you shouldn't be out here alone."

"Don't call me Cyber-dweeb," Cybershock snapped at him, turning for a second to glare at him, before she turned away and just kept on walking. She choose to ignore comment about 'little kids' entirely, well aware that she was only a few years younger than he was, even if he did try to act older than he really was for whatever reason she might never understand. He had joined the same educational room as she was in every day in school, when he'd landed on the planet – and each of those rooms covered maybe ten years in age range. And she was fine outside alone. It wasn't dark yet and her carrier knew where she was... trusted her to go straight home.

"Fine, Cyber-fail," Speedtrap laughed, his voice and expression still taunting. "I won't."

"Leave me alone, Speedtrap," Cybershock demanded, firmly. She stopped, recalling everything her carrier had told her once, and placed her hands on her hips, facing him and looking him confidently in the optics. "I don't feel like dealing with rusty scrap metal today."

"So... I hear your creator fell flat on his face-plate in the market awhile ago," Speedtrap said, ignoring her request to leave her alone completely, and laughing like he'd said something that might actually have been funny. "I wasn't there to see it myself... I heard it later from my brother. But my guess is your Daddy was wasted drunk in public, Cyber-loser. Nothing but some drunken-bot who can barely walk ten steps. 'Guess that's why he just sits around by the racetrack and we never see him drive... huh, pipsqueak?"

He smacked her then, with both of his hands in open palms against her upper arms repeatedly. He wasn't hitting very hard, but Cybershock still didn't like it anymore then she liked the ignorant thing he'd just said about her beloved creator – her personal super hero to anyone who asked. Annoyed by the smacking, and fully fed up with him by now, she slapped his hands away from her, stepped sideways to put distance back between them.

"He can drive just fine," Cybershock said. Her rage was building quickly – her carrier's slightly too quick temper she knew so many bots would say to that. But she forced her anger back, and took an intake to calm herself down – just the same as she'd always seen her carrier do. And quickly she continued on, boldly. "My creator could out-drive your bragging loud mouth brother any day."

She never had seen her creator race. He certainly could transform, and drive in his own alt mode. It was him who had taught her to do both of those things – as well as teaching her to scan a form, once they'd finally found a Fortwo smart car just like the alt mode he knew she so wanted. But she knew he could race if he wanted to. She was certain of it. He'd told her before, more then once, that his racing days were over, and it was her turn now. But still, she did hope some times to see him try just once...

"Not falling over drunk he can't," Speedtrap answered back, ignorant as ever, and pulling her back from her thoughts. He scowled at her, before he finally gave a smirk, that Cybershock wished she could wipe clean off his face-plate. "And he just went right on taunting. "I bet he falls over everything at home... I bet you have nothing nice anymore 'cause he's busted it or sold it. I hope he doesn't fall over wasted at work... that's dangerous for a medic..." He paused then. And for a long moment he just glared at her maliciously enough to make her shudder.

"Your daddy came to talk to me yesterday at the track," he growled, as he took a step closer while she promptly backed up. "He did seem pretty normal and not falling over wasted then, but I did see him nearly fall on the steps and I know you saw it too. Anyway I didn't like the talking to, Cyber-loser. And if I ever get another one, you'll be fraggin' sorry

"My creator is not a drunken bot," Cybershock said, ignoring his pointed threat completely, as she fought back now boiling rage She calmed herself, making herself remember that some bots simply didn't understand. They could learn, she reasoned quickly, if only someone bothered to explain. And if only her fellow youngling knew just how far her creator had come in her lifetime...

"He can't help falling sometimes," she told him calmer now. She was walking toward the climbing structure in the middle of the playground by now, with Speedtrap still close beside her. And she stopped to lean against the climbing bars. "It barely happens anymore... that day in the market was the first time in forever. He's got some processor damage is all. It was a random processor crash... that's how he explains it. But he's the best creator on Cybertron! And a good medic too... his patients are younglings like us. He's saved lives..."

She thought about Switchgear then, and the first time she'd seen her – long before Switch' was one her best friends. The green bot had been damaged once - laying half way to recharge in her creator's lap in the courtyard, where he'd brought her to sit with his own family so she wouldn't be so lonely. He didn't have to do that. And even at the young age she'd been then, Cybershock had known that without being told. He didn't have sit with Switchgear laying in his arms... didn't need to rock her while she cried in panic... didn't need to make her laugh and try harder when he failed to at first. But he had because that was just what he did. And Cybershock knew he did such things in his job all the time.

"You're lying," Speedtrap said, scowling. And Cybershock just stared for a moment, shocked at the accusation, unable to do or say a thing as he quickly went on speaking loudly and hateful. "You're a dirty lair Cyber-fail! Your creator doesn't have processor damage. Bots don't survive processor crashes, liar! He's a drunk freak and you're prob'ly embarrassed." Speedtrap paused then, took an intake, and huffed rudely. "Even if it was all true... if he did suffer some crash, then it's too bad he lived. He's better off dead, 'cause we all know he's some rotten ex decepticon."

"How dare you say my creator – or anyone's – is better off dead!" Cybershock yelled at the bully. Every bit of the rage she'd fought back, spilled over at once. And this time she didn't try to stop it. "You're a terrible bot, you... rust bucket!"

"Maybe your processor will crash one day too, Cyber-freak," Speedtrap yelled as the confrontation escalated needlessly fast. "Maybe it's inherited. Maybe the city will laugh at you someday too!" And Cybershock, stood frozen then, shocked to hear such horrifying things from the mouth of a youngling not much older than herself. Some adult bots said vicious things in public – not many, and not often... but some. And Cybershock was sure that even they were not nearly that viscous.

The data pad, she'd managed to keep a hold on until then, was knocked suddenly from her hands by the bully – who bumped it hard from underneath, while she was busy fuming. And it hit the ground hard. It had landed on the rubber flooring below the climbing set up, but still the fall had been bad. And Cybershock could see already to her dismay that the thing was cracked badly.

"Those were the notes for our class science project," she exclaimed, letting herself fume even more, now that she had ever more to fume about. "Hotwire's Switch's and mine. You know that project is due tomorrow." she thought of her two best friends, who she'd spent the evening working with to make that project perfect... how they'd all been sure it was a top grade. And they'd had fun doing it too, or at least she did, because she loved science more then any other class.

"I'll never be able to retype that whole thing tonight!" she cried in exasperation when she saw, after reaching down to grab the pad, that it was fully blank and worthless, with it's memory chip laying loose on the ground.

"Then I guess all three of you will fail," Speedtrap smirked now, more wickedly then ever. And Cybershock balled her hand up into a fist, sure she was more than ready to knock the smirk off his face-plate by force just to make him stop. "Of course those two freak friends of yours will hate you soon, and you'll be all alone every day crying in the corner, because you had the notes to hold, and you made them both fail."

The bully jumped them, a good foot into the air, before his heavy feet came down on the data pad and so clearly on purpose, fully smashing it to bits where there had been so little hope of salvaging the notes before.

"You don't need science anyway, Cyber-freak," his smirk grew even bigger, and he learned forward into her face-plate, before he smacked her hard against her shoulder panel, making her stumble a little right before he shoved her nearly off her feet. "You're just going to end up like your creator... a processor damaged junk pile as you said yourself. And when that finally happens, I'll bet your 'wonderful' creator won't even love you anymore... because every parent likes their younglings normal and pretty..."

Cybershock felt the tears of coolant forming in her optics then – the horrible bullying forcing them from her before she could stop them. She lowered her optics, and quickly turned away, but it was clearly too late, and she knew that in under a second, when she saw him grin through her now cloudy field of vision.

"Junior class racers don't cry, Cyber-nobody," he said laughing as he shoved her again harder. "First frame babies do! I guess you're just a baby..."

"Get fragged!" Cybershock yelled, the very unacceptable 'grown up' language leaving her mouth before she could stop herself from cussing. "You're nothing but a good for nothing bully. And I told you to leave me alone!"

She pushed him then, shoving him backwards just as hard as he'd shoved her more then once. And it suddenly felt so good to push back that she did it again, making sure this time to smack her hands against his frame a little as she did it, wanting him to hurt as much as she did, wanting him to be embarrassed if he fell, wanting to laugh if he did just like he'd laughed at her creator for no reason other then that it must have made him feel powerful to laugh at his misfortune.

Speedtrap didn't fall though. He barely even stumbled. And now he shoved her again, so hard that she fell instead, landing hard against the climbing set up she still been so close to. Her leg hit the lowest of the metal platforms, near the level of the ground, and slipped under it somehow, as she hit the rubber padded ground.

For a moment, Cybershock thought next to nothing of it. But Speedtrap was instantly panicked, his former bravado and smirking gone entirely. He just stared at her for a moment, mumbled something not quite coherent about how he hadn't meant to do... whatever it was he had done. And quickly he turned to run away without a look back.

Cybershock rolled then, from the strange and ridiculous position she'd managed to land in, laying sprawled half sideways with one leg wedged under the platform. And it was then that she saw the energon over the ground. It was coming, she understood to her shock and horror, from the side of her lower left leg, the one that had been wedged tight under the metal sheeting of the first climbing platform. And she realized then for the first time just how sharp the thing was somewhere underneath it – where bots did not usually shove parts of their own bodies while simply playing on it.

It was bad. She knew that at once, because it had only just happened, and already her lower leg was soaked with energon and laying in a small spreading pool of it. She wondered for a second what to do. And she realized, to her sudden panic, that she didn't know. She needed to get herself home, then more then ever – the sun was quickly setting overhead. And the energon she was still losing quickly glowed bright in the dimness of oncoming night. So she tried to stand up, struggling to pull herself up to her feet, using the bars in the climbing setup still in front of her. Pain tore through her lower leg and all the way to the knee, just as soon as she put her weight on it, and after a couple of steps, just to turn herself around, away from the climbing bars, she simply fell to the ground, painfully and helpless. She knew then she'd never manage to walk the block and a half still left until she reached home.

Cybershock wanted to cry again at that moment. Not from pain - though that was about as bad as anything she could remember ever in her life, and her whole lower leg was now throbbing and pulsing with soreness – but from her panic and helplessness at being outside alone when she wanted to be home. For a good moment she tried yelling for help across the empty playground and the surrounding small field of metal. But no one answered her back, and she understood quickly that of course no one was around there at night. Her city could be dangerous after dark and she remembered that all too clearly, as the sun set lower in the sky. It was mostly drunken bots and the fights they caused, rather than anyone who would truly want to harm a youngling – at least as a rule – from what she'd heard older bots talk about. But still, the idea of being outside alone too late unnerved her. She tried to stand up again, and of course she fell back down again. And this time she found her world appearing to spin around her horribly from the increasing loss of energon.

"Cybershock!" a voice called from... somewhere. And she recognized it with immediate relief as her carrier's. But the voice had been calling for a while. She could tell at once, because already it had grown so urgent. And Cybershock realized to her growing terror that she hadn't heard it all while the world spun around.

"Mama?" she muttered, quiet and shakily, looking up to see her carrier kneeling down quickly on the ground beside her.

She wondered for a second how she'd found her, and then slowly she realized with relief, that her carrier must have walked the shortcut she'd guessed her creation would take to reach home. And sure enough her guess had been right.

"Cybershock," her carrier said, urgently and calmly all at once. The first aid kit she, like most Autobots never teemed to be anywhere without, was in her hands at once. "What happened to you, baby?"

"I... was pushed... and I fell," Cybershock explained. Once again she wanted to cry, this time with relief just as well as her still increasing pain – which only seemed a little worse as her carrier worked fast, wrapping her leg in some metallic covering.

Instead of crying though, she explained everything, including all that Speedtrap had said. By the time she was done, her lower leg was tightly bandaged and she was once again close to shaking from her rage. Her carrier just held her just tight against her frame while she sat together on the ground, both of them taking a good long moment before they let go again.

"Cybershock, why didn't you call my comm-link?"

Her carrier's question was a good one. And Cybershock just shook her head, confused and unsure, and suddenly feeling silly.

"I... I don't know," she answered slowly. "I guess I just panicked... and I... I couldn't think..."

"It's alright. It's alright."

For a second Cybershock was back in her carrier's arms again, and she managed to smile then a little.

"I... I think this might be pretty bad," she said, mumbling a little with her face-plate tight against her carrier's armour. And looking up at her again, she saw her nod slowly.

"You creator is still on shift tonight at the hospital," she told her, smiling assurance the way she'd always seemed so easily able to. She picked Cybershock up from the ground, holding her in her arms with some obvious difficulty but still just as clearly able to do so entirely, and smiled assurance again. "I think we had better go see him at work."

* * *

Soundwave had been outside alone for awhile in the courtyard out behind the Autobot base, thinking his thoughts as the sun began to set in the sky to the west. He turned slowly, at the sound of slow, slightly uneven footsteps, and turned a little on the bench he was sitting on, to see Knockout approaching, with a fuel container in his hand. The red painted medic's hint of a smile was clear, even in the dimming light all around them. And he paused beside the bench, waiting until Soundwave nodded slightly, before he sat himself down on its other end, holding the back of it as he did, so clearly careful so as not to lose his balance and fall.

"You were looking for me?" Soundwave asked, uncertain and concerned all at once. But Knockout just shook his head.

"No," he answered, chuckling just a little, as he come to so easily do. "But I'm on shift tonight in the hospital, and I saw my chance to take a fuel break. When I saw you out here too, I figured I had a perfect chance to come and have a chat."

Knockout still smiled, and he laughed again just a little. But his tone was serious too. And Soundwave just looked in his direction, waiting to hear what it was he had to say.

"So, I hear you've decided to go home to Firestorm and be a creator to your youngling," Knockout said. He smiled brighter, clearly happy for him. And Soundwave nodded slowly.

"I've asked Firestorm to be my bondmate too," he said, allowing a smile to fill his own face-plate then. "She accepted..."

"'Bout high time," Knockout laughed loudly. He dared to smack Soundwave lightly over the side of his shoulder panel – something bots were beginning to do more and more now, as Soundwave himself grew slowly more used to allowing it. "You... sound surprised over her acceptance."

"Slightly..."

Knockout only laughed louder at that answer. And for a moment, Soundwave saw him simply staring at him, half dumbfounded.

"She's wanted to be your bondmate for more than a decade," he said, shaking his head, with obvious disbelief. "And now you're surprised that she's agreed to be..." he just sat silent again, his head still shaking for a moment, and chuckling quietly.

"I've never talked much at all about my creator," Knockout said when he'd stopped laughing and turned serious again a good moment later.

Soundwave just looked at him without a word, confused at the sudden change of subject, and the unexpected one the medi-bot had picked. But Knockout smiled a little again, though warily this time. And he sat leaning back on the bench while he sipped from his fuel container.

"He was not a brute of a bot, as I understand yours certainly was," he explained when he spoke again. "Never hit me or any such thing... though he and my carrier would fight constantly and they were both constantly covered in dents because of it. My creator and I never could see optic to optic. He hated that I wanted to be a medic. He worked with his hands all his live, mining energon for a living. And he felt I ought to do the same and like it. He used to laugh at me for reading. I'd bring home texts I'd find in second hand market stalls, medical texts mostly. And he'd drive over then on the road, yelling that I was far to dumb for such reading. I'd tell him I could make it, he'd tell me I was just to stupid. I'd tell him I was trying for the academy of higher education, he'd say I'd only be a laughing stock. He destroyed my drawings. He mocked my friends... He told me constantly I was doomed to die alone because I'd never find a bondmate. The day I left home was the last time I saw him, because I just couldn't deal with it anymore.

"Many bots would say I showed him good and proved him wrong. Which I guess I certainly did, and that's obviously wonderful. I'm head of ward. I have my own family. Still... it bothers me sometimes even now. I wonder why I wasn't good enough... what I could have done that might have made him say just once that he actually loved me like my carrier always tried to convince me he did."

Knockout paused then in his recollections. And he sighed a little, finishing his fuel quickly, before he continued on, far more cheerfully now, through just as serious.

"I promised myself, when Cybershock was still a few days old, that she would never live like that. She'd never doubt herself, never think she wasn't good enough, or that her creator doesn't love her just for wanting what she wants and having her own dreams. I genuinely don't care if she becomes a rocket scientist, or if she wants to work road construction one day. I just want to see her smile when I tell her she'll be the best... whatever it is that she's going to be."

"My carrier told me once that I don't need to become what my creator was," Soundwave said, instantly understanding his friend and teammate's point.

"You don't," Knockout said firmly. "I didn't. I learned exactly what I didn't want to be, and decided I would never be that."

"I fear my own child could never love me half as much as Cybershock loves you," Soundwave said. It had been a concern of his from the moment Firestorm had first mentioned her want of a youngling. And it had been years since then. "Or half as much as Bumblebee's entire growing batch of his loves him... or..."

"You've heard me say before I once thought for sure, my Cybershock would never possibly love me much," Knockout said seriously. "When she was born I feared more then anything that she'd simply resent me just for being me. For being half helpless while any little friends she'd have would have fast and strong, non-damaged creators. Arcee told me I was our baby's 'super hero' once. And I truly couldn't believe it when I realized it was true. I make mistakes too, you know. Everyone does. I've let her down. I've even made her cry a time or two. And somehow she still seems convinced I'm the greatest... yours will think the same about you."

"Were you... afraid when you learned Arcee was carrying your newspark?" Soundwave asked slowly, just slightly worried that he may well have offended his friend in doing so. But to his relief, he saw heard him laugh loudly instead.

"Are you fragging kidding me?" Knockout exclaimed, still laughing while he shook his head in obvious disbelief. "Probably much closer to completely terrified. I thought that night my spark might stop. I slowly got better, at least until the youngling was born. And then I feared I would hurt her just by touching her. You saw her then. She was just so... helpless."

"Thank you for the talk," Soundwave said, serious and meaning it.

"Not a problem," Knockout replied, smiling a little again. "You know where I live if you ever want to talk some more." He stopped then, rather suddenly. And just sat a second listening to something Soundwave couldn't hear.

"A page from the youngling ward," Knockout explained, standing in a hurry just a second after that. "Basically the sound of duty calling. I'll... be around."

 **Notes/ In a recent review, someone wondered if Firestorm and Soundwave would have a boy or a girl... and that gave me a potentially fun idea. I'm not honestly entirely decided yet. And either way the fact that they have a youngling is more important to the plot than it's gender. So... you folks tell me. Majority wins on this one.**


	20. Chapter 20

"Daddy?" Cybershock asked her creator, optics growing slightly wide with growing anxiety, as he worked at unwrapping the metallic wrappings from around her damaged lower leg. It was more then clear that he was being just as gentle as he could in the task, and working so slowly in his hesitation to hurt her. But energon had soaked though already in the short time it had taken just to reach the hospital, it was clear the damage was significant, and the youngling – though she hid it well, was clearly in some real pain. "Is this... bad?"

Knockout stood still for a moment, just looking carefully at the damage, before he reached up to switch on an overhead light, which made the little bot blink from discomfort and cringe with slight nervousness.

"It's not terrible," he muttered, thoughtfully. And he shook his head with a slightly sad expression. "It is however, certainly bad enough." He looked carefully at his youngling, his optics on hers. "My girl, you've manged to cut yourself almost clear to the frame. And you've nicked a line just a little bit. That's where all the energon is coming from..."

"Oh... no..." Cybershock said, her voice suddenly half way to helpless. And clearly she was beginning to panic a little, though she tried just as obviously hard to hide it."

"You're okay, baby," Arcee said, stepping closer to the repair table the small bot lay on, inside a small treatment room on the hospital's youngling ward. She looked up at her bondmate then, sure her expression must have looked helpless, and muttered quietly, "I didn't think it was _that_ bad."

"One hundred and ten percent fixable," Knockout answered to assure both his mate and their child all at once.

Arcee watched him as he crossed the room quickly, and mixed something into a small container half filled with energon, which he then carried back and handed to the youngling urging her to drink it, which she did without any complaint, and a curious look on her face-plate.

He saw damage like this so often, and Arcee knew that. But he looked strangely uneasy regardless. And she knew it was because now it was their own child that was injured. She watched her mate, sadly, as he leaned down closer to the youngling, and held her small hand in his larger one for a moment.

"Cybershock," he said slowly. "I'm going to call Ratchet, and let him do repairs on you, alright?"

The youngling bot appeared to consider for just tiny second, before her optics opened wider in slight distress. She held tightly to his hand with the one he was holding, and her little body stiffened badly.

"Can.. can't you do it?" she asked urgently, her voice slightly shaky with growing anxiety by then. "You fix little bots all the time, Daddy!"

"Okay," Knockout nodded. But Arcee saw the distress on his face-plate. And no matter how he tried, he could not possibly ave hidden that from her.

The door to the small treatment room opened then And a young medical student hurried in, pushing a cart of supplies he must have been out gathering up, at Knockout's request. Starsong. Arcee remembered his name after a good moment of trying to. And she nodded to him in polite greeting, smiling politely when he did the same.

"Daddy?" Cybershock asked. Her voice was quiet and shaky again, and she almost trembled now with obvious dread. She had been laying partly upright in a position her creator could clearly work from well enough, because he'd been doing so just fine. But suddenly she moved, sitting herself up and turning her body into an awkward position that must have made her leg hurt worse if nothing else. Her hand held her creator's tighter. And she looked around the room, clearly afraid now. "Do... do I need to... to power down?"

"I'm not sure," Knockout answered her calmly. He stood still for a second, watching her with a thinking expression.

"How do you feel, my girl?" he asked his youngling, resting a hand again on her shoulder panel, and smiling just a little. "Think you can stay nice and calm, and lay still for me if we let you try and stay awake?"

"Yeah..." the little bot answered, nodding a little, and sounding truly hopeful and relieved.

"Alright then," he said, calm and still smiling assurance while he gently pulled his hand away from hers so that he could work. "We'll give this a good try." He smiled at the little bot, again with assurance, before he added calmly, "I'm going to lay you flat, okay,"

"'Kay..." Cybershock mumbled. Her voice was calm and strangely sleepy. Her optics blinked a little.

 _'Knockout,'_ Arcee said, speaking to him silently through their spark connection. And even so, her voice was urgent, concerned. ' _You're really not going to put her into power down? I really think you should...'_

 _'It's perfectly obvious the thought of powering down had her more scared than the repair itself_ ,' Knockout answered, seriously. Starsong had grabbed a light blanket from a cupboard without even needing to be asked to. And Knockout took it from him quickly, throwing it gently over the youngling's upper body, smiling at her when she giggled a little, as he tucked it under her lightly. _'And powering any bot down for something this simple, would not even cross a medic's mind if she was a little bit bigger. With younglings her age I've always found it's best to let them have some say."_

 _'I'll never tell you how to do your job. You know exactly what works and when. But... Cybershock is my baby. I guess that makes it seem different somehow.'_

 _'She's my baby too, remember,'_ Knockout almost chuckled then through their connection, before he turned more serious then before, and sighed. _'If I'm honest, I thought my spark would stop when she asked me to do this for her myself. I didn't expect her to. I really wanted to let Ratchet take over, because she's my child..."_

 _'Exactly why she trusts you more than any bot...'_

 _'I just can't stand the thought of hurting her... even if it is of course only while trying to fix her...'_

 _'She understands.'_ Arcee said, assuring him now with a hint of smile though her own still obviously unease. She turned to smile with the same assurance at the youngling, who now lay still and quiet on the repair table, her optics nearly closed, and her hand lightly held the corner of the blanket she was covered in – a cute and silly thing she'd done since she was tiny. Arcee chuckled then, despite the serious situation. And looked back at her mate again.

 _'What did you give her?'_ she asked him still silently, though she trusted him just as well as their youngling did.

 _'Just a bit of pain medication,'_ Knockout answered right back. He looked at the youngling again, smiling to see how well it was clearly working. _'But it'll keep her calmer too, make her a bit sleepy._ _I don't think she'll full on recharge though.'_

 _'You knew all along she'd refuse to power down if given a choice,'_ Arcee mused in silent realization and dismay.

' _Of course I knew that,'_ Knockout smiled a little. _'And I know you knew it too.'_

 _'So, what can I do?'_

 _'Talk to her, distract her. Do your best to keep her from moving if she tries.'_ Knockout turned around a second, to quickly inventory the items set out by the medical student. And he nodded his approval to said nervous young student, before his attention went back to his mate and their youngling again.

 _'I fear you might just hate for this far more than she will,'_ he explained, still silently. _'Because she is still a youngling, in a youngling frame, there is no means of simply blocking the pain sensory network through a control panel. In frames this little we block wiring manually with medication and an injector.'_

 _'That will be horrible for her...'_

Cybershock had always been the calmest, boldest and most daring of the younglings most bots knew of. And she was co-operative as could be when it came to routine medical care... except when it came to anything sharp. Since the day she been old enough to understand spoken words the very mention of any such thing would make her pout and grumble, forgetting her words almost entirely, while she cringed and stiffened in panic. It got no better as she grew older. And Arcee remembered how she'd sat on her creator's lap just recently and nearly too big then to do so, sobbing hard against his armour, trembling badly, while Ratchet gave her anti-viral boosters.

 _'It will be for a moment, yeah.'_ Knockout sighed again, forcing away his own dread, to smile again in assurance at the youngling, who lay looking back at him with her optics still half closed.

"Cybershock," Knockout said gently. He held one of her hands for just a moment while he talked to her, and she just lay still and listened. "You ready, my girl? I'll be honest. This will probably hurt pretty bad for a minute. But you won't feel anything more after that, okay?"

"Ready," Cybershock said bravely, sleepily and she nodded her head just a little as she answered. But just a second after that, her body stiffened just slightly, and her nodding turned instead of shaking her head just a tiniest bit. "Wait! Wait! What... what are you going to do?"

"You just lay still now baby, okay," Arcee said, calmly. She'd reached the same conclusion Knockout clearly had already – that if they could help it, the young bot might just be best off not exactly knowing. She rested one hand lightly on the back of the little one's shoulder panel, and took a slow intake, forcing a smile onto her face-plate, in order to keep the youngling calm. One of the youngling's little and still held the corner of her cover, but the other, lay beside her doing notion. And Arcee grabbed it gently, noted a slight slowing of the little bot;s intakes as soon as she did.

Picking up a small spray bottle that Starsong had filled already with cleaner for him, Knockout gently spayed a tiny stream of fluid over his child's lower leg, just so he could see what he was doing under the steady – though thankfully lightening - flow of energon from the small gash and the nicked line beneath it. So far so good, it seemed. His youngling barely moved at all, jerking away only slightly, it seemed, from the coolness of the cleaner. With only slightly more confidence now, Knockout quickly picked up the small injector from the worktable, careful to hold it exactly where she would not see it in his hand if she were to open her optics again, which she didn't. He located a main wire quickly, at the edge of the small gash. And with a quick intake to calm himself, because he was sure he was possibly far more in need of calming down than his own youngling by then, he worked to inject the medication against the wire just as quickly and carefully as he could.

Cybershock lightly whimpered then, once with pain. And her injured leg kicked lightly, a mostly instinctive need, Arcee understood sadly, to free herself. Because any bot, particularly a young one, would naturally try hard to free themselves from something painful if they possibly could.

"Intake, my girl," Knockout said, still forcing calm into his voice, when he noticed quickly that indeed the little bot had pulled an intake in, only to hold it instead of 'breathing,' out again. He turned then to Starsong, with a quick instruction of, "come here for a moment. Try to hold her in place for me, but please, hold her gently."

Knockout shifted a little, to repeat the process of a second before with the next tiny wire, determined to do the job well, all while causing as little pain as he could to his own youngling. And this time Cybershock lay perfectly still, just intaking slowly, and impressively bravely. And she did just the same when he shifted positions again to keep on going. Cybershock was clearly in some pain. She had to be, because any bot would have been. And Knockout's spark broke a little as he worked because he hated so much to cause her any discomfort at all. But she just held her carrier's hand tightly, intaking slowly with her optics still tightly closed, and her little face-plate hidden against the covering pulled over the repair table.

"This is going to the worst of it yet. I'll go as quick as I can," Knockout told the youngling, well aware that it was his bondmate who cringed a little at that, while the youngling herself just stayed still, and nodded a little in understanding, with her face-plate still hidden.

"M...mama?" she mumbled quietly, her voice shaking badly.

"I'm still here, baby," Arcee assured her at once, squeezing her hand a little as she did.

And she watched her mate as he moved, working as fast as ever, to find the wiring running to the leaking line somewhere under the little bot's torn armour plating. And this time the youngling bot gasped with her obvious pain, before he'd done much of anything.

"Ouch... ouch..." Cybershock mumbled, obviously not able to help herself then. And she clearly still tried to hold still, trusting her creator, in spite of the pain she was in. But she just couldn't quite seem to do so very well.

"You're okay," Arcee told the youngling, encouraging her with gentle steady rubbing of her back panel, and a smile she couldn't see. "I can't believe how good you're doing with this." Arcee wasn't exaggerating either just for the sake of encouragement. The youngling really was a nearly perfect patient, even given her pain at the moment.

"I know, I know, my girl," Knockout said slowly. And his own despair was still more than obvious "This is horrible. I'm sorry. Just a few more seconds, I promise."

"Owwww" Cybershock moaned then, a coolant tear appearing on the covering, and flowing slowly away from her mostly hidden and closed left optic. Her right hand held tightly to her carrier's, squeezing as hard as she could. And she lifted the left from where it had been holding lightly to her blanket, only to wave it in panic, trying to bat and grab at her creator's hands in her growing distress. "Please stop... stop..."

"We're done," Knockout answered, assuring her again with the calmness of his voice. Her set the injector back down on the worktable, then thought better of it, and instead picked it up again, only to stash it away inside the table's small storage drawer, once again well out of sight. He was amazed that his youngling had gone just as long as she had, letting him finish entirely, before she started crying. And in the same same moment, he was near devastated at understanding he'd made her cry at all to begin with.

"Good job, baby," Arcee said to the youngling. And with a hand resting lightly on the side of her little blue face-plate, she encouraged her to look up again and open her optics. "You did it!"

Cybershock looked up at her then. And slowly she smiled a little , with a few tiny coolant tears quickly drying on her face-plate. Her hand still held her carrier's tightly, and she appeared to realize that for the first time. Because she quickly let go, gently grabbing it again though far lighter now.

"Sorry, Mama," the youngling apologized. But Arcee simply smiled at her.

"It's fine," she said "Don't be sorry."

"I can't feel the bottom of my leg," Cybershock said, optics wide open again, looking around and clearly far more amazed then even remotely scared by her current condition.

"I think that's the idea," Arcee told her, chuckling loudly now. "Keep holding still though, okay baby?"

"Okay," Cybershock answered easily.

And much to the dismay of both her creator and carrier, her optics went straight to her damaged leg, her head turned a little awkwardly and watching intently as soon as Knockout began the job of patching up the nicked internal line with a mini-welder.

"Don't look, don't look," Arcee cried in disbelief. And she looked around the small treatment room at once, obviously searching out something, anything at all, she might use to distract the youngling with.

But Cybershock was far too old already, to be distracted by simple shiny things, or harmless tools with moving parts, as might have worked when she was younger. And she went right on, calmly watching, as Arcee quickly gave up the idea of distracting her from it that way.

"How about we go to the market tomorrow?" Arcee asked, speaking quickly. "We need flavor packs for the energon dispenser anyway, and we can see about a couple new data discs for you."

"'Kay, Mama," Cybershock answered, simply. She still watched Knockout work, just as intently as before, with slightly sleepy optics. And the tone of her voice made it clear that any answers to her carrier's questioning were secondary to that in her own processor. Arcee chuckled then, with a shake of her head.

"She's just as bad as you are," she commented then, to her bondmate, all without pulling his attention away from his work. "She's watching because it's truly interesting to her."

"It's not going to hurt anything," Knockout answered, assured as he went on working.

"If anyone ever had any doubt at all, she's a medic's kid..." Arcee mumbled, with another chuckle and a shake of her head, after another failed try at making their youngling talk to her about nothing, instead of so intently watching herself be repaired.

 _'You were right in not powering her down,'_ Arcee told her mate, silently again though their spark connection. _'As fast as you can work, you'll clearly be done in a few more minutes. And I so often forget how tough our kid is.'_

 _'I never like to say I told you so... but,'_ Knockout replied, still working intently. And his silent voice laughed jut a little.

 _'Watch it...'_ Arcee answered back in mock warning. Her optics were quickly right back on their youngling again. And shook her head, still dismayed as the little bot just went on watching her creator repair her with a mini-welder. Cybershock's expression, muted only slightly by her sleepiness from the mild medication, truly was one of fascination and interest.

 _'She's so... calm,'_ Arcee mused a short moment later, impressed with her youngling – if not nearly driven to cringing by then at watching just how intently she continued to watch her creator while he repaired her. She didn't know many adult bots who would have simply watched like that, and could never have imagined a youngling wanting to do so.

"So, how did this happen in the first place?" Knockout asked. He spoke out loud again now. And his question was clearly meant for whoever answered it for him. It was exactly the question Arcee new he'd ask eventually of course. And although she had yet to get the details herself, she shuddered with anger just thinking again of what she knew already.

"Speedtrap," Cybershock explained, looking up for a moment to frown with sudden anger at the bot she'd just mentioned, before she went right back to watching her creator fix her again. "He chased me part way home from Hotwire's. So I stopped to talk to him for a minute on the playground... I hoped that would make him leave me alone. He pushed me once, so I pushed him back. He pushed me harder. And I fell."

"I see..." Knockout muttered. It was clear in an instant that he was far from pleased with the situation. Cybershock had never been one to fight with other younglings. This was the first time either of her parents had heard of her ever doing so no matter what the reason was.

"Daddy. He laughed at you for falling in the market once," Cybershock continued. And she was clearly beginning to get upset now. Her little body stiffened, and and she made a frustrated huffing sound. "He... he called you a drunk. He laughed when I said he was wrong. Then he..." she stopped speaking then, her body stiff with her obvious fury, as she looked up into her creator's optics. "He... said you might have been better off dead!"

 _'She was defending me...'_ Arcee heard Knockout's voice say, speaking silently again in her processor. He continued to work, clearly almost done by then. And the youngling, to her dismay, had gone right back to intently watching him. But Knockout was so clearly bothered, defeated by the implication of what the little one had done.

 _'Our youngling should not need to defend me,'_ he muttered silently just a second later. _'I should be defending her...'_

* * *

"Firestorm," Soundwave said to the bot soon to be his bondmate, in the near darkness of their recharge room. He could see the glow of her optics, and knew she was awake. And the stiffness of her body turned away from his own, though still close to him, concerned him at once. He moved then himself, rested a hand on her shoulder panel while he sat himself up part way. "Are you... alright?"

Firestorm moved a little so that she could look at him. And she smiled just a little in the darkness. But she didn't roll her body over so that she could face toward him, as she'd always done. And her head nodded only slightly.

"I've been awake thinking," she mumbled, serious and strangely shakily. "I just can't seem to recharge..."

"What are you thinking about?" Soundwave asked slowly. He gently tugged against the shoulder panel he still held, urging her to turn and look at him, which she did.

"What will happen if the world is invaded by those last remaining 'cons?" she asked, her voice quiet. "I know the Autobots have a plan. But what if it fails? What if that new army that's coming is bigger than anyone thinks?" Her optics opened wider, and she stared into the darkness of the recharge room, showing signs of true unease where she had certainly never been prone to it ever before. "What if Cybertron is back at war?"

"Firestorm, I don't think that will happen..." Soundwave said, only hoping just as much as anyone else so did, that he was right.

"But what if it does?" Firestorm insisted.

"You're a neutral, Firestorm," Soundwave told her, smiling assurance in the darkness as he puled her against him. "I can't be sure... no one can. But it's likely you could leave again if it came to that... just like your family did once before... wait it out on board a ship. And of course our child would go with you."

"I know that much," Firestorm said, still no less anxious than she'd been before. And Soundwave just smiled again with assurance. "Though I would never want to think of leaving. But... what about you?"

"I would fight for the Autobots," he said simply.

"Against your own former faction?" Firestorm questioned him. And Soundwave just sighed, sadly.

"Yes," he answered, serious and thinking for a moment. "There was a time, that would have bothered me. I helped the build that faction. But the Autobots are my true faction now. And with them is where my spark lies, because they... we... are truly right."

Firestorm smiled then. But still she looked both tired to the point of misery and too shaken to recharge. And Soundwave recalled vaguely that she had kicked and moaned and yanked erratically at the covers in the night, which had woken him up after her.

"You had nightmares again?" he asked her, sadly knowing the answer already. She was the one of them having nightmares now, and it seemed to have happened every night since he'd come home to her.

"Yes..." Firestorm mumbled, nodding as she pressed her body tighter against his.

"Another dream about the war for Cybertron?" Soundwave guessed. And again, Firestorm nodded slowly.

Such nightmares were the only ones she ever seemed to have, and almost the only dreams she seemed to dream at all in days. Soundwave had grown worried of course, and more so because he couldn't understand a reason for it. She was a neutral, and a refugee. She had never even been there.

"The city was burning again," she said, her arms wrapped tight around him now as she spoke. And with her body so very close to his, Soundwave was certain he could feel the light pulse from her spark chamber beneath her armour, as their newspark moved faster. "I held a youngling my the hand... a small one... a barely walking first frame. And we tried to run. There was nowhere to run though and bombs were going off in every direction. I heard heavy stomping footsteps and someone yelling to get down... There was blaster fire and our child was dead on the road..."

Soundwave cringed a little, at Firestorm's recollection of her nightmare. But he knew at once, it was little different then any other she'd described, the night before, or the night before that. There was always a small child, and the child always offlined. It was always war that killed the youngling, and it was always so very violent.

"Those dreams of yours are just that," he said firmly, hugging her tight before he gently lay her back down flat on their recharge station. "Some very bad dreams. You fear for our newspark because every carrier does. And so you dream your fear, because your processor needs to make it all make sense..."

"It's funny," Firestorm mused, calmer now and smiling weakly in the darkness, as she reached for Soundwave's hands and grabbed them gently. "In every crazy horrible dream I so clearly see the newspark as a youngling. It... always looks so much like you. But I never know if it's a boy of a girl. And the youngling never seems to have a name..."

"We haven't learned the gender yet," Soundwave answered simply, because to him it suddenly made perfect sense. "And we haven't picked a name."

Firestorm nodded, laughing just a little, obviously realizing herself just how much sense that suddenly made. And she smiled for a moment before her smile faded, and she closed her optics. Just a second later though, they were wide open again, and her frame had stiffened.

"Are you alright?" Soundwave asked her. And she looked up at him, scared and uneasy all over again, and just as tired as ever. Slowly she shook her head.

And so, Soundwave lay down beside her again, his arms tight around her, as they lay in the darkness – which was now broken slightly by the rising sun beginning to show itself outside the partly open curtains. He smiled at her, and pulled her close against his frame, again feeling the slight motion of the newspark as it pulsed hard inside her little body.

"Dreams can't hurt you, remember," he said slowly, calmly. He felt the stiffness slowly leave her frame as she lay safe against him. "Our newspark is fine. And you are too."

"Do you really love him?" Firestorm asked, her voice quiet as she drifted fast toward recharge. She'd asked that very same question a lot since he'd come back. And he could not say he blamed her for her need of constant reassurance. Her hand held his again, though lightly now. "Do you really still love me?"

"Yes," he answered her, smiling as the sun continued rising. "... and that very much applies to both of you."

"I'm glad you reconsidered," Firestorm mumbled, a hint of a sleepy smile on her face-plate. She still said that so often too. But Soundwave didn't mind that either, and he knew she knew it. So he just went on smiling, as she finally dropped off back into recharge.

He moved again once she'd dozed off. But he didn't far. Instead he simply held way to sat up again on the recharge station. And for a good while, he just watched her while she recharged.

Soundwave had never before known any bot who had carried a newspark while body also produced its frame. In his understanding – and likely anyone's – a youngling's frame was built by his creators, and his spark placed inside it once said spark was born. He knew that so called 'protoform carriers' existed too, or at least they had once. And such a thing had once even been common to all, according to the records – at least that's what Ratchet had explained. Still, for a modern bot to carry that way was unheard of. And that made it terrifying to him.

She had ways to go still in carrying their youngling. She was still not halfway, as he understood it. But it was becoming clear the youngling would be big. The protoform that was steadily growing inside Firestorm's frame was big enough already that her body armour was growing visibly tight around her front. And it appeared at least a little uncomfortable. Her body wouldn't change all that much... a metal body couldn't. But looking at her then so intently, considering the time she had left to carry, Soundwave grew worried Firestorm was a mini-bot. And a small one at that – certainly small enough to be mistaken all too often for a forth-frame youngling, by hurried bots who failed to pay attention. And Ratchet had hinted already just the day before, at her need to be careful, least she fail to carry to term.

Soundwave got up slowly, once he was certain that Firestorm was soundly back in recharge. And with light creeping steps and careful not to wake her, he wandered away from the recharge station. He stood for a moment in front of the window, watching the sun as it rose over the city. He crossed the room then and left it, walking slowly down the hallway and into the living room.

A first-frame recharging basket stood propped up out of the way behind the sofa and still in it's box. And Soundwave, recalling his promise to build it, decided he might as well do exactly that – even if it was a little early to worry about that yet. He began to open the box, found it opened already,and laughed, remembering that Firestorm had looked it over once before deciding the job was impossible for her. And so, he simply tipped the parts out into the living room floor, careful to make as little noise as possible in doing so. His mind formed a picture at once, of how the pieces were meant to fit together, as soon as he;d spent a moment looking them over on the floor. And slowly, he began to build the thing – assembling the three simple pieces that made up the basket first, before he moved on to the frame it sat on.

There was, he saw as he got it nearly together, a small catch and a level beneath it, to allow it to rock, or to lock it into place so it sat steady. And for the first time, he thought of sitting beside the thing one day, pushing it lightly to rock the child the lay inside it. He recalled Speedbreaker's child, who he'd held once when she was a tiny first-frame – a youngling he'd been encouraged to hold because clearly most other bots they knew had already gotten such joy out of passing around er and her brother to be held. He smiled, recalling how the tiny bot had grabbed his fingertips, just like he know babies did with anybot. And he remembered the day – that same day... the day of his initiation party – that Knockout's child, Cybershock, much younger then, had climbed into his lap without a thought about it. She as the first – and so far the only – youngling to ever have done that. But then, he wasn't exactly around younglings much. His own badly damaged youngling sister Lightwave certainly liked to whir at him happily though.

Soundwave finished his task of building the basket, and stood up from the floor to rock it back and forth a bit, testing to assure himself of its safety. And carefully he pushed it into a corner of the living room where could surprise Firestorm with it before they found its proper place. He stood then for a long moment, just looking at the fancy silvery metallic basket, with its clean white padded inside. He knew that one day, sooner than later, a tiny bot - one he himself had created – would recharge inside that small basket. And he wondered what the tiny bot would look like. He thought again of Speedbreaker's tiny youngling girl, who'd grabbed his fingertips and giggled, and he knew his own youngling would do the very same. The youngling would be a real living spark. She – or maybe he – already was. And suddenly, looking at the small recharging basket again, he shook with his remorse over deciding once that the spark was a mistake.

"Soundwave...?" Firestorm's voice slowly caught his attention. And he realized only then that he'd been crying hard while he stood in the middle of their living room, still looking at the empty recharging basket pushed into a corner. She sounded sleepy – he could tell she'd only just woken up, and of course found him gone. But she smiled slightly, through obvious concern as she quickly walked closer to him.

"Fire... storm..." Soundwave said slowly. And he tried hard to stop his coolant tears but couldn't as he carefully rested a hand over her spark chamber. "I'm... sorry..."

Firestorm just looked up at him, smiling with that same concern. Although she showed a look of silent assurance now at the very same time. Soundwave though was not done explaining all he wanted to say. And he tried hard to do exactly that, even as words threatened to fail him again.

"Newspark... was not a mistake... not a tragic accident. You ask often if I love the baby... I do love her. More than anything. I am... so very sorry..more sorry than anything for asking you to destroy her. How could I, when she will be... brilliant beautiful youngling. Our youngling..."

"You know I forgive you," Firestorm said. And when she wrapped her arms around just as tightly as she could, he could feel the slight hint of her slightly misshapen middle, which had shifted a little to accommodate the frame that her body was producing. "You now I understand you had your reasons."

"I know. I know... but..." Soundwave could not even express what it was he was trying to say now – his greatest and suddenly almost paralyzing fear. But Firestorm just smiled at him again anyway, her optics telling him somehow with a single word that she understood him anyway.

"The newspark..." she said slowly, moving to hold the hand he still held over her spark chamber. "Our baby... He's awake now. I know he is because I can feel his awareness. He is... calm... happy. Soundwave... I believe that he forgives you too."

* * *

Cybershock was busy in her small recharge room. She sat at her metal work desk, typing just as fast as she could on a data pad, as she worked on homework. She wished, somewhat idly, that she could type faster and better – more like Hotwire could. And she felt herself growing just a little frustrated, when she found after reading back over several lines of code she had just finished typing, that she had made several ridiculous mistakes in the process. High Cybertronian language was not her favourite subject to study. She would have much preferred working on science for a while. That she could eagerly study for hours. Or even post war history. That subject had began to fascinate her too...

The youngling bot sighed a little and looking with determination at her pad of written language code again. And she sighed louder, when she spotted another mistake. She reached over toward the music player that sat, set up on a wall mounted shelf near her desk, and changed music tracks that played on it with the light touch of a button. The track that started playing now was faster than the last, upbeat and one of her favourite songs. And Cybershock took a second to tap her hands on her work desk in rough time to the music, making light metal tinging sounds, before she settled back down to her homework.

She heard a light tapping against her closed door, as she got back to work. And Cybershock looked up with an interested, curious and surprised look on her face-plate, when her creator stepped slowly into her room. He'd been more cautious when he came in lately, respectful of her own space, she knew. And she respected him for it. It was the very same with her carrier.

"Too loud?" Cybershock asked, gesturing toward her music player,and realizing for the first time just how high the volume was. She knew that neither her creator nor her carrier shared her taste in music, even if they didn't mind at all that she listened to whatever she happened to enjoy.

"Not with your door shut." Her creator just smiled for a second, stepping closer to her work desk.

"Daddy, what did I get wrong?" Cybershock shoved her data pad of typed code into his hands, before she muted her music to let him think. "I... I know this is full of mistakes, but I'm not sure how to fix them!"

Her creator looked over the pad for a moment. And then he looked again, before he shook his head a little, and looked up confused and helpless. In a tone of defeat he muttered, "I'm sure sure I'm the bot to ask."

"But, you're smart, Daddy," Cybershock protested, looking up at him from her seat on her desk chair. She knew by then, in the back of her mind, that her creator – or her carrier for that matter – certainly didn't know everything. Of course she knew that. But still, she wanted to believe he did anyway, because it still made her smile to believe it.

"I'm a medic, my girl," her creator said. His look of one of slight amusement. "Not a formal linguist. Ask your carrier? She's better at such things."

"Okay," Cybershock answered with a slight sigh. And she started to get up, reaching for her pad. But her creator set it down on the work desk instead.

"Ask her later on," he said, smiling again. And for a moment he looked oddly uncertain. "There's... someone here to talk to you."

"Really?" Cybershock questioned, in surprise.

She hadn't heard the door buzzer, or either one of her parents talking with anyone, over the music she'd been listening to. And she wondered who it was. Not Hotwire or Switchgear. Her creator's uncertain look told her right away it couldn't be them, because all three younglings sometimes almost all lived at each other's apartments. And none of their two and a half sets of parents batting an optic at one another's younglings dropping in. Hotwire would likely have walked right on in with only one quick knock of the apartment door, and probably raided the energon dispenser, if he'd come over to hang out for a while. And Switch' would have knocked politely and waited to be let in, but then hugged Cybershock's parents like they were her own, and walked straight down the hall.

Cybershock followed her creator out of her recharge room, and out to the door of their apartment. Where she blinked once in surprise at finding Speedtrap, standing just inside the doorway. He nibbled, clearly nervous, on a little energon cake her carrier had obviously offered him from the batch she'd made that morning, and stood chatting so awkwardly with her that he barely talked at all, while he glanced around the apartment.

"Hi, Cybershock," the blue youngling said – the first time she'd even heard him call her by her name instead of 'Cyber-dweeb' or so much worse.

"Hi, Speedtrap," Cybershock replied, because she was unsure what else to say or do. She hurried toward her carrier for a second, grabbed a cake from the plate now on the counter behind her, and gestured uncertainly toward her recharge room down the hall.

"My creator said you wanted to talk to me," she said uncertainly, when she'd reached her room with Speedtrap close behind her. She sat down in her desk chair again, choosing to leave her door wide open, and sure that either one of her parents was listening closely for any sign of trouble from the blue painted bully.

Speedtrap just nodded silently. He looked around her room instantly, clearly impressed as he stared for a good moment at the black and white checker printed flags that hung, one on either side of the wall above her recharge station. Cybershock may have outgrown so much of her old youngling room. And it had been changed little by little over the years. But she'd always had those flags, and could not imagine ever not having them hanging exactly where they'd always hung. They perfectly matched her old checkered recharging cover, that now lay folded across the bottom of the recharge station, over the plain white one, and served as something to cover up in while she sat watching data discs.

"Your creator said I could come in..." Speedtrap said, his tone still hesitant. And he stood standing in the middle of the room, looking uneasy. "He... he's actually pretty cool. He's funny. And... he's obviously smart."

"Yeah..." Cybershock said, smiling a little as she agreed. She gestured toward her recharging station, inviting her visitor to sit down on it. And he did, clearly still uncertain and uneasy.

"I'm... sorry I called your creator a drunk," Speedtrap said, surprising Cybershock with his apology. That was the very last thing she ever thought he'd say to her. "I... I guess that was a pretty dumb thing to assume. Last night I talked to Takedown, from our racing league. I told him what I said, 'cause I still thought it was funny - and he got mad at me... said your creator's worked with his little brother, Turbo since they got here... He said your creator ran the youngling ward while still only partly functional, and just doing the best he could."

"Apology accepted," Cybershock answered slowly. And she smiled a little, surprised when he smiled back, even it was just a hint of one.

"Is... he okay now?" Speedtrap asked hesitantly. He glanced around the room again. "Your... your creator I mean. He's not going to crash again any day and offline is he?"

That question, coming from a bot like Speedtrap, might have been almost offensive just a day before. It would have sounded exactly like more harsh bullying. And Cybershock know he might have asked such a thing with a mocking laugh, just to make her cry so that he could then laugh at her for crying again. But it seemed different now. His tone was truly concerned, if though he truly wanted to know and hoped that what he'd asked about not the case at all.

"Yeah, he's okay now," Cybershock said, smiling a little with confidence as she explained. "It's been a very long time and he's been perfectly fine."

"I shouldn't have said he's better off dead either," Speedtrap continued, his voice uneasy again. "I know that's a terrible thing to say about any bot. And it doesn't matter that he was damaged, or that he used to be a 'con. He's still just your creator to you."

"You surely would not have liked it any more then I did, if I'd said yours is better off dead," Cybershock answered. And she supposed, only after she'd said so, that she'd done it only to drive home a point... since he had of course already admitted to knowing he'd been wrong.

The second she'd finished speaking though, her spark dropped, because Speedtrap was looking down at her recharge room floor. He did look up again, for a second, but then he looked down quickly, and almost before she could spot the tears in the corners of his optics.

"My... my creator is dead..." he said slowly. And his voice shook with his sudden tears of coolant, though it was obvious he was trying to hide that too.

"I... I'm... sorry," Cybershock said, understanding at once that it was her turn apologize now and mean it.

She would never had felt the need to make her point if she'd known that Speedtrap had no creator of his own. But how could she possibly have known that. She didn't know anything about him. And - she realized then, to her sudden sad understanding few, if any, of the other younglings she knew really did ether. She started to stand up from her work desk, unsure exactly what to do or say next. But the blue youngling started speaking again.

"He died in the war before I ever got to know him. And all I've got is couple photo-files from my carrier. He... was blue like me. I look just like him... and I hear he was fast. Not fast enough though to dodge that thrown grenade. The field medic's report says it would have been fast, according to my carrier... that he may not have known a thing before his spark chamber was blown apart, so that's something I guess..."

"And you hate the fact sometimes that a former 'Con lives, while an Autobot died?" Cybershock guessed, understanding life in a way she never had before. It made her even sadder, and she didn't like the feeling. It made her more sad still when Speedtrap slowly nodded, clearly understanding it all for himself then.

"Bots off lined on both sides," Speedtrap said slowly, considering. "I know it's not personal... but..."

"My carrier and creator both like to remind me that it's our generation who will get to do better," Cybershock explained. "I... like to believe they are both right. That we can have a world of peace now, and there's no reason to be starting wars with each other..."

"I hope they're right, Cybershock," Speedtrap said, looking up again. His face-plate was streaked now with fallen tears. And he sighed, sadly. "... that I don't even need to join a faction to fight for and kill some little bot's creator because he wanted something different than I did once."

The blue youngling at silently for a moment on Cybershock's recharge station. And for a short while, he just stared down at the floor again, before he said more.

"Your creator loves you more than anything. Anyone can see that from a mile away. I bet you can talk to him about anything and he'd listen... he cheers you on so loudly at the racetrack, even if his own racing days are really over. He's great at being a creator... So is Hotwire's... and Takedown's... and everyone else's. And... I'll never know what mine would have been like. In my mind though he would have been a bot like yours... He would have laughed at the silly things I did. And he would have said 'good job' even if I came in last... He would have defended me if any one picked on me like I did you. That little talking too I got from your creator that day the track... and the one I got from him today when I came over here... I like to think mine would have done the same thing to some other youngling who deserved it."

"Do you have a carrier?" Cybershock asked. It might have been a silly question in a way. But she didn't know enough about him to know for sure. And she had no idea even where Speedtrap lived. His brother lived above her family, and he always had. Sideswipe and his noisy parties were a constant complaint for both of her parents for as long as she could remember. But she had no idea if Speedtrap lived there too. And she'd never even thought to wonder before.

"Of course I have a carrier." Speedtrap laughed a little, like something was truly funny... like the answer to Cybershock's question should have been obvious. He glanced around the room again, and shrugged slightly. "She's a good bot, too. Working hard to start over since we landed here. And she still looks so sad sometimes... I guess because she lost her bondmate. But she loves me, and she tells me that every day before she goes to work."

Cybershock just smiled for a moment at that. She couldn't think of anything to say.

"How's... your leg?" Speedtrap asked, after both of them as been silent for another moment. He looked down at her leg – the one that was damaged when he'd shoved her – still underneath fer work desk.

"Better," Cybershock answered slowly Shrugging a little. It was been a couple of days already. And it still hurt more then she would have liked or admitted to. And it still bore the look of new welding – which she disliked even more. Still, it was getting better. "I can walk on it fine, so that's something. I... haven't tried racing yet. But I think I'll be able to fine."

"I... I'm sorry I shoved you, and caused that. I... I didn't mean for you to fall. I didn't know you would. I just... I get so mad sometimes."

"Me too. That's... why I shoved you. That's why I called you sparkless. I don't think you are now really."

"I hope you can race tomorrow," Speedtrap said. He was grinning now, even though the coolant tears he'd cried not long before still showed on his face-plate. "You're fun to race against because you make it hard to beat you. You might have won last time if I hadn't cheated..."

Cybershock smiled brightly for a moment before she yanked over the drawer of her work desk, and pulled out a small data pad, she'd filled in the last year or two with photo-files. She searched it quickly, until the found the one she was looking for – an image of her creator before, before she existed and before her parents were even close to being mates. He sat parked in his vehicle mode on the racetrack, both younglings knew well. But the track was new then – the pavement just finished. And piles of metal chucks and dust stood in crumbling piles at the sides. He sat behind the finish line, having just won, and thus stopped driving, while both Bumblebee and Smokescreen rushed in for second and third place behind him. She showed the photo-file to Speedtrap. And she watched him grin, surprised and impressed at once.

"I guess you've really got something to live up to," the blue youngling said slowly, appearing to think for a second. "Your creator really was a racer once. And he beat Smokescreen too! That bot's a big shot in the master's league now!"

* * *

"Soundwave?" Firestorm asked slowly. She sat on their apartment patio, exactly where he'd put her – in a comfortable and padded chair that looked out over the railing and the road far below. She kept her feet up to, propped on a padded foot rest - just as he ordered her to with his serious intent and warning look, when she even thought of moving to rest them flat on the ground. "Do you really think the newspark is a girl? You've always called it 'she.'"

Laserbeak sat perched the arm of Firestorm's chair – quite unsurprising because she'd been oddly attached to the little white and yellow bot since returning to the apartment, And Firestorm idly patted the edges of the little bird's wing tips – which Laserbeak happily extended to clearly encourage more such affection. And that made Firestorm laugh a little at her silliness.

"I don't know," Soundwave answered slowly. He stood looking out over the roadway. But he turned again, smiling at her when she spoke to him. "I suppose I needed something to call it, and so I just chose 'she'." He sat down at the edge of a second chair, his favoured one, and smiled brighter. "How about you Firestorm? Do you think it's a boy? You've always said 'he'."

"I have no idea either," Firestorm answered, laughing a little now. "I've always just needed something to call it too... though obviously one of us is right, and one of us is wrong."

"You don't want to find out? Ratchet could probably tell us easily enough at your next check in," Soundwave suggested causally.

"Soundwave! No!" Firestorm exclaimed. She laughed even as she cast him a mock glare, and shook her head hard. "What would be the fun in that. I want to be surprised... like Speedbreaker always is with every one of hers. I... I want to let bots guess. Let someone start a poll soon and see who got it right."

"Alright," Soundwave smiled. It really was all the same to him... though he could admit there was something intriguing somehow in not finding out ahead of time.

Firestorm moved, suddenly far more restless, in her chair. She shifted ad wiggled in her seat, much to Laserbeak's squeaking displeasure. And again her feet moved to touch the patio floor. Soundwave glared in her direction, with his head shaking lightly, and seriousness in his optics.

"Stay put," he ordered her gently, smiling assurance as he did.

"I... need my afternoon fuel and additives," the little white and yellow bot protested stubbornly. And she certainly did need them then. She'd been consuming fuel with said additives every few hours, on strict medical advice – whether she happened to want any then or not.

"I will get it for you and bring it out here," Soundwave said firmly. And he glared at her with compassion in his optics as he got up to go inside the apartment. "Stay. Right. There."

He disappeared inside. He was gone only long enough to fill a container from the energon dispenser, before he returned, shaking the container to mix in additives from the pre-mixed packet he must have dumped in while he hurried back across the apartment.

Firestorm took the fuel from him with a grateful smile. And she sipped it slowly, while she looked out over the railing again.

"I feel so entirely... useless," she complained, a second later however. And the smile slowly faded from her face-plate.

Things had gotten serious for her and quickly. And in just the few short day since Soundwave had built the recharge station to surprise her, Ratchet had ordered her onto light resting status over significant worry for the newspark and it's still so rapidly growing frame inside her tiny body. She had only gotten out to sit on the patio because Soundwave had picked her up – quite cheerfully and grinning – to carry her out there despite her loud protests that she could of course still walk just fine, and was certainly allowed to go that far. And that morning she had showered in the wash station, while sitting on the shower bench Knockout had passed on to her from a time before he had relearned to stand up. The paint shop, of course was closed without notice.

Fifty-two days. She reminded herself firmly of the time she had left until the due date of her youngling. And she knew full well she wouldn't carry quite that long. Ratchet had said at the check in during which he'd placed her on rest that they were aiming now for at least forty more days... though a few more would be better if only they could manage to make it. And Firestorm knew already after only two days off her feet almost entirely that another forty or more would quickly become almost unbearable.

She was doing it for the youngling. She reminded herself of that firmly, as she looked out over the street and the city – which she was now all but cut off from, and rested a hand against her spark chamber, a wiry and suddenly anxious smile on her face-plate.

"Ratchet did say she is still as strong as ever," Soundwave said, looking in the direction of her chest panel and obviously indicating the tiny being that grew beneath it. He pulled his own chair closer and sat down on it beside his soon to be mate, with a small smile. "She's just... big."

"Definitely not a youngling mini-bot," Firestorm answered, with dismay. Ratchet had said earlier on that to have carried a mini-bot would have been ideal for a few good reasons. But things were not always ideal. And at least the youngling was healthy and still had a chance just as good as any.

"I'd hoped for a mini-bot youngling," Soundwave said. And Firestorm looked up at him again, just a bit surprised at that.

"Really?" she asked.

"I certainly did," he said back, smiling brighter. "Easier for you to carry of course... but it's even more than that. I would have loved to have a child that would grow up just like you... with a personality three... maybe four times her size."

"I hope the youngling looks like you," Firestorm said. And Soundwave laughed a little, his head shaking at once in her direction.

"No," he said. "I hope the youngling looks just like you. Less... shockingly intimidating than I know I've always been. And far more lovely and adorable instead."

"You aren't shockingly intimidating. You are... perfect and beautiful."

"Says you, Firestorm... you've always said so, but you'll still always be the only bot that ever has."

"What about Shortwave?" Firestorm asked, smartly. And she looked up at him with a smirk across her face-plate. Soundwave only shook his head a little, laughing silently and mildly amused.

"Shortwave is my carrier," he said, his head still shaking. "A carrier will say her youngling is perfect and beautiful if he has four arms and the face-plate of a predicon..."

Firestorm wasn't sure exactly what was so funny about anything Soundwave had just said. But something in the tone in which he'd said it make her burst, without any warning at all, into loud giggling laughter. And after a good moment of laughing harder than she had in the time since he'd been back, she looked up though her now coolant clouded optics to see him laughing just as hard as she was.

"You've got to go back to work tomorrow," Firestorm said, looking at Soundwave with serious optics when the pair had finally stopped laughing. I know you're still working a case. And you can't miss your patrol shift again."

The bot who had once wanted nothing to do with the thought of a youngling, had been home for the past few days already, caring intently for his carrying nearly-mate. And Firestorm dreaded the long and endless hours the next day when she would be alone in the apartment, not medically permitted to do much except sit watching data discs or reading pads, or lay down and nap. She decided a visitor might just be nice – someone to sit with a while and drink flavoured energon mixed - in her case - with her already dreaded additives. But Arcee and Speedbreaker both lived clear across the little city. And Shortwave, along with her pair of younglings, had been housed in an apartment a few floors below Speedy's. For the first time ever in the time she'd lived in her much loved post-war building, Firestorm wished she lived a little closer to most other housing.

"I have arranged to take further time off from duty," Soundwave said, smiling. "When... or if... I must return to work before the arrival of our youngling, we can surely make arrangements with friends to help you at home. And Laserbeak will stay here with you." He chuckled for a moment at the bird, now pressed against Firestorm's small body, and whirring contently. "I... can't imagine she has any objection to that."

Firestorm sighed with relief, in spite of how suddenly weak she felt for needing him to stay to help her as much as she did. And the way he referred to _their youngling,_ said with a brand new tone of anxious excitement made her smile at him again with her joy.

"You really do want him now..." she observed. And it really was far more observation than question. She rested a hand against her spark chamber as she usually did when referring to the newspark. And she saw him smile right back at her.

"Yes, I do," Soundwave answered back. He leaned forward in his chair. And for a moment he was silent and with an intent and thoughtful look on his face-plate. Eventually he slowly spoke again, while obviously considering his words. "I... think I must want our youngling just as much as you always did by now. Truthfully the idea of it is still so..." he paused again. And Firestorm knew him more then enough to know he was searching for a word that had managed to escape him, as they still did once in a very small while.

"Terrifying..." he said a moment later, and having found the word he'd lost. "And... even that is understated. I... I still fear I won't be a very good creator. That I've never learned enough of such skills well enough to have any business even thinking of trying. I don't dislike youngling. I believe you know that well by now. I just... could never have imagined subjecting one to life raised by a broken bot like me..."

"You are not a broken bot, Soundwave..." Firestorm began to say, interrupting him. But she knew he wasn't finished. And almost sheepishly, she stopped talking again to listen while he continued on.

"I could not face having one, because I could not live with the idea that I might ruin a poor tiny bot's little life in my... deficiencies. And... when she happened without us trying, I felt for a moment she would be better off if she never lived to know me and to suffer for the life I've lived." Soundwave paused again, to take one of Firestorm's small hands in his, while his other one rested over her spark chamber. "I can't say that no longer matters. It does. It's... important. But it matters less than waiting to meet her. Less than wanting to hold her and to see what she looks like... or doing the best I can, and telling her I'm sorry if I ever need to say so."

* * *

"Hi, Daddy," Cybershock said, smiling cheerfully from her place sitting on the sofa, when Knockout walked into his family's apartment. She swung her legs – still a bit too short to touch the floor when she sat all the way back on the large beige sofa – playfully forwards and back. And the data pad she'd been reading from when he'd walked in rested on her knees.

"Hello, my girl," Knockout answered, grinning back at the youngling.

"Catch!" he exclaimed just a second later, after he'd reached into his storage compartment, to retrieve a little bag of sweets he'd bright home to surprise her with just because he could. And he tossed the bag toward her waiting hand, before she'd even fully managed to raise it in her puzzlement.

"Sweets!" the little bot cried, happily, once she'd caught the little bag. And she opened it at once, digging though it with her finger tips. Her grin grew brighter when she found they were the flavor she liked best. "Aluminum ones!"

"Heads up!" the youngling said, tossing the bad of sweets casually toward her creator – who still stood across the living room from her – once she had taken one to immediately munch on, and two more to stash inside her own compartment.

Cybershock had been tossing objects – though usually things considerably bigger and easier to catch – to her creator since her years of helping him in rehab practice, playing 'catch with him' because to her, it was almost though not quite simply a game. And Knockout smiled fondly at the memories of that – though he knew it may well have saddened some bots – as he caught the bag while fumbling a little.

"Thanks," he grinned, taking a sweet for himself. He looked around for his bondmate, saw no sign of her, and turned back to his youngling. "Where is your carrier?"

"Napping." Cybershock shrugged a little. "She's been tired all day... so I promised to be quiet and leave her to recharge for a while."

"Hmm..." Knockout muttered understanding. And he nodded at her answer. He decided quickly he would leave Arcee to rest a while longer since she must have needed it. But he noted that she had been tired for at least a couple days already, and decided make a simple mental note and leave it at that.

The youngling just looked up at him, obvious expecting him to say something more. And when he didn't she questioned him instead. "How was your duty shift today?"

"It was..." Knockout sighed, stepping closer to his daughter, who looked at him curiously and interested. "It's been a day. I wasn't on the youngling ward much today because I was called to help with a serious emergency instead."

"What happened?"

Knockout wasn't going to say anything more about his work. He shuddered inwardly just a little, as he recalled the details. And he certainly didn't want to leave his small daughter disturbed. But she had always been carious to hear about his work and his cases in whatever vague details he could share without naming any names.

"A couple of young bots..." he said slowly. "Adults I think... though they might have still be forth-frame younglings... they ran into some buried explosives left over from the war while goofing around outside the city. One of them knocked himself out good after he a good ways and landed on his head. And they other one... he blew a leg off."

"Are they both still alive?" Cybershock asked. She looked hopeful, but calm and understanding, if not sad.

"Yes," Knockout answered. "And they will certainly both live to be fine."

"Then you did your job," Cybershock said, smiling. Knockout smiled too, at that.

"Have you fuelled yet?" he asked the youngling. And she nodded

"What are you reading?" he asked her next, curious as he sat beside her on the sofa.

He took the pad carefully from where it rested on his child's knees. And he blinked in dismay when he discovered what it was that she'd found. Finding such pads was not exactly difficult. There were out and stored on a shelf just across the living room, among a collection of various reading material. But still he was no less surprised.

"A... medical textbook?" he questioned the little bot. Smiling with amusement despite his dismay. He handed back the datapad to her. There was certainly no harm in it exactly.

"Just the basics, Daddy," Cybershock said smiling back at him again. Her bright blue optics looked up into his red ones. And suddenly her face-plate showed her excitement. "Just some bot anatomy. It's... so amazing. We have so many parts!"

"That we do, my girl" Knockout answered. And since his child was clearly interested, even if possibly only in passing he continued on, grinning. "Just a Cybertronian grounder intake system alone has..."

"Fourteen parts!" Cybershock interrupted. She bounced a little in her seated position on the sofa, clearly excited to talk about such a topic. "One fan base... four blades. There's the main hose and the output line. A spinner mechanism... and..." she stopped talking then, clearly unable to remember everything exactly. But she was positively grinning anyway.

"Cybershock, how long have you been studying my reference texts?"

"Since the day after I got hurt, and I watched you fix me." The youngling still looked up at her creator. Her passion for a subject, and her genuine interest obvious.

"I never knew what I wanted to be when I grow up," she said slowly. Her optics showed the same trust they had always showed, of a youngling who knew she could tell either one of her parents anything and trust that they would hear her out and listen to her. "Hotwire's known he's going to be police-bot since we were little and playing police-bots and robbers on the playground. And Switch' isn't sure but she does have a good idea. But I never knew, and now I think I do. I know I have a long time to decide. And I guess I could change my mind. But I think I want to be a medi-bot one day?"

"Really?" Knockout questioned. He forced his tone into one of neutrality. But inside he was a strange mix of pride, amazement and some manner of dread.

"Do you think I could do it?" Cybershock asked. She wiggled closer and hugged her creator's arm, just like she'd always done since she was tiny and he could barely hug her back. She stared up at him again, now with hopeful and suddenly doubtful optics.

"I... certainly think you could," Knockout answered, because it was the truth. "I think you can be anything you want to be if you want it enough to never stop trying. Never stop doing as much as it takes..."


	21. Chapter 21

Arcee had come to enjoy her afternoons at the racetrack more and more. It was wonderful to sit outdoors in the sunshine. And spending time with her little family made her smile, no matter where she spent it. She sat, at present in the front row of the stands beside her bondmate, in the place that everybot knew well by then was 'theirs.' And she tapped him excitedly on the shoulder panel, watching their youngling as she ran her time trial, and at the time clock he held in his hands.

"Her best time yet," she said. And Knockout grinned back at her nodding. His face-plate bore the look of excitement that never seemed to leave it when he was anywhere close to the track, and more intense still when their youngling was on it.

"Looks like she might just be challenging someone to a practice race today," he mused. And Arcee looked up at him, questioning. She had missed the first moments of the younglings racing practice, chatting with Speedbeaker – who was sure she'd gone into early stage spark separation with her fifth youngling – over her commlink, and away from the stands.

"I told those little bots the best time gets to challenge another of their choice to a drag race on the track today," Knockout grinned. "They all love to race one on one, and I figured that would make it all the more fun."

Arcee sat a moment, leaning back on the bench and thinking. She wondered idly who it was Cybershock might choose to challenge. And she had to admit that she just didn't know. Cybershock was a complicated little bot, and her actions weren't always predictable. Hotwire and Switchgear were her best friends. And she may just choose either one to challenge for the fun of it. But neither was half as good as she was. And she could easily beat either. Takedown was a possibility, and he would take the challenge easily. Or... Speedtrap. Arcee chuckled to herself then, suddenly sure her little bot could only choose the one among the little racers who was just as fast as she was. The one who raced just as hard as she did.

She looked around at the gathered group of younglings along with a few of their carriers and creators, scattered through the stands in mostly the first few rows. Many talked quietly to each other, and most smiled cheerfully.

"That youngling looks better and better every time I see him," Arcee said, tapping her bondmate on the shoulder again lightly and pulling his attention toward Turbocharge, who sat with his creator and carrier again, among a handful of his many siblings.

"Indeed he is," Knockout grinned again. "Turbo will be joining the junior league himself after next practice. He still can't walk quite right exactly. But he can drive as fast as any bot out there. And he wants to race with his brothers."

"That's wonderful," Arcee exclaimed. And impulsively she hugged the mate she knew as well as anyone who know them, had given the youngling a promise of a childhood like any other little bot could have.

Knockout smiled brighter still, as he stopped the timer, watching as Cybershock crossed the finish line and hurried away to the edge of the track. She grinned just as brighter as her creator, the second she'd transformed to her bot mode. And she was still smiling bright when she hopped over the fence, and flopped down to sit between her parents, hugging then both –one small wrapped around each.

"Best of the day," Knockout said, standing up carefully after he'd checked and rechecked the times of each racer marked on his datapad. He looked around, addressing the small group of little racers that all looked back at him expectantly and hopeful. "Is... Cybershock."

"Yay!" cheered Hotwire and Switchgear in nearly the very same moment from the bench right behind Arcee and her family. Clearly they both knew full well that neither of them had been close to winning, but they cheered for their friend regardless. Others just looked mostly a little disappointed as they smiled anyway.

"So, who's the racer that's getting challenged by our time trail winner then?" Knockout continued. He grinned brighter then ever with pride at his youngling, an arm thrown over her shoulder happily. But Arcee noticed, the little bot was strange, not even looking around at her fellow youngling racers. She didn't seem to be trying to decide on anyone at all.

"Go on my girl," Knockout said, chuckling a little at her uncharacteristic silence. "Issue your challenge. Anyone of them would love to race you."

"I challenge..." Cybershock said, loudly enough to be heard in the stands while she looked around her. She paused a moment before her blue optics locked on Knockout's red ones. "You!"

"Cybershock..." Arcee mumbled, shocked and dismayed, and shaking her head a little in near horrified disbelief. She sat still for a moment, wondering exactly how to feel, before she decided she wasn't actually angry or even annoyed at their little bot. Cybershock, she knew had done exactly what anyone should have expected she might.

"You can't challenge your..." Arcee began to explain, still dismayed as she looked the youngling in the optics.

But Knockout was handling it already. He sat down slowly, and gently pulled Cybershock down to sit beside him, where he quickly hugged her tight against his frame.

"My girl..." he said slowly, with the hesitation of a bot who clearly didn't know exactly what to say to her. "You know my racing days are done."

"I know," Cybershock answered quickly. And for a second, Arcee thought with relief that would be the end of it. But the youngling's optics opened wider, filled with hope and determination, as she raised her head from her creator's shoulder to look him in the optics again.

"I don't want to believe your racing days are really over," she said firmly. "And... I don't think you want to either." her little blue optics, quite unexpectedly filled with coolant. And she just sat for a moment, looking up at him and crying a little, before she slowly spoke again, her small voice shaky with her motion now.

"I've never seen you race," she said. "But... I have that picture in my photofiles... you on the racetrack before you got sick and before I was born. You looked so happy then, Daddy... like... like you were doing what you really loved. And I... I've always wanted to race against you just once, ever since I saw that you could... you could drive again..."

"Oh, my girl," Knockout said, pulling the now crying hard youngling against his frame again, hugging her tightly and frowning with his own obvious despair. "I didn't know you thought so much about this. I didn't know it meant this much to you."

"Of course it does, Daddy," Cybershock answered. Her voice shook so hard now from her tears, and this time she didn't move to look up at him at all, clearly content instead to stay tight again him and just be hugged tightly, while she cried even harder. "What kind of terrible selfish youngling would I be if... if I didn't notice the sad look on your face-plate every... every time you say your racing days are... are over?"

"Knockout," Arcee said, quickly understanding the little bot and her determination entirely. She leaned over to rest a hand on her mate's shoulder panel, while her other arm hugged their youngling for a moment. She looked into his red, suddenly so saddened optics, and smiled a little, over the little bot's head. "What do you say you give this a try... for her."

"I'm a little Smart-car, Daddy," Cybershock said, through tears and still not looking up. But her voice was pleading, still holding out hope. "You're an Aston Martin. I'm a bot you could easily beat..."

"Do it, Knockout!" someone cheered loudly from behind them. Hotwire, Arcee realized quickly, looking his way. And Switchgear was quick to clap her hands together, grinning along with him.

"We wanna see you race!" Turbocharge cheered from his place a short ways away. He exchanged grins with a few of his family, who were clearly encouraging him on in his cheering. "Like you said I could do!"

"Go for it!" another youngling yelled from somewhere just a little higher up. That was Speedtrap, Arcee noticed with surprise. And she smiled when she saw him grinning with the others.

"My racing days died with my processor," Knockout muttered, his optics looking down at the ground.

He held the youngling in his arms just a little tighter though, just as if that could somehow make a difference. And Cybershock, who had stopped crying to listen to the cheers of her track mates, started up again and hard as ever – her poor spark so clearly near broken at her creator giving up before he'd ever tried. Arcee gave her bondmate a glaring and serious look, but he only shook his head, the sad look never leaving his face-plate as he looked toward the track.

 _'Knockout!'_ Arcee said, speaking silently then through their shared spark connection. But even in her telepathic speech, her sudden disapproval and complete disbelief showed through, and she knew it. With one hand barely moving, she gestured discretely toward the youngling, her arms thrown around him, and still crying hard into his armour. _'Take a second to really look at her.'_

 _'I didn't mean to make her so upset,'_ Knockout mumbled back, as silently as her. His tone was remorseful. _'But I'll never be any good on the track now. I can barely drive faster than she can... and not always entirely straight even...'_

 _'You think she cares?'_ Arcee countered. She was growing upset at his sudden stubbornness. And watching their very upset, near spark broken child only made her more so. She glared at her mate harder then she ever had before.

"Cybershock," Knockout said slowly, to the youngling in his arms. The little bot finally looked up at him again, tear stains on her face-plate, and a look somewhere near embarrassment in her optics over crying so hard at the racetrack. But she clearly couldn't help it either. "You know my driving skills are nothing like they were before... That bot in that photo you clearly love... he's long gone now."

"That... never stopped me from wanting to race with you anyway..." Cybershock said, her voice quiet and serious.

Knockout just shook his head a little at that. And for a long moment, Arcee sat still on the bench sure he might just chance his mind and hoping he would. But she saw him slowly shake his head again, while he looked down instantly, with a firm but regretful expression, at the youngling he still held in his arms.

"You understand, I just can't race with you, right?" he asked her, his voice sad.

And Arcee watched as Cybershock nodded, hesitant but calm. She lifted her head from her creator's chest panel, and smiled a little.

"I understand, Daddy," she said. And she looked up into the stands for a good long moment, clearly deciding who she might challenge instead.

Still, the spark-break was no less clear on her face-plate. And Arcee meant for a moment to glare at her bond-mate, with her rare feeling of near rage at him, until the remorse she saw, clear as day made her change her mind.

* * *

Shortwave, sitting in the small comfortable living room of Firestorm and Soundwave's small apartment, smiled at the little white and yellow bot who sat beside her on the soft red sofa.

"How have been been feeling lately?" she asked. And she wasn't all that surprised, when Firestorm shook her head a little in response.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored half way into recharge most days," the mini-bot said. And she sighed, leaning back against the cushions of her sofa, before her optics wandered to the doors of her patio – which Shortwave had opened to air the apartment out for her awhile.

"It's a perfect day out there," she muttered, her complete unease and restlessness more then obvious. And Shortwave frowned, recalled how Soundwave had told her once recently, that even suffering the worst effects of her processor damage and barely able to walk without use of a walking frame, she was so rarely not doing something, or trying hard to get somewhere.

Resting as much as she was medically required to, allowed to walk only the length of her apartment hallway before sitting again, and even then only if she absolutely needed to – sitting home watching the window as life in the city went on without her – that had to be so hard for a bot as young and always on the move as little Firestorm was. Shortwave could imagine that without needing to be told.

"Let's go sit out your patio for a bit," the older bot suggested with a smile. And she held out a hand to help Firestorm to her feet, before moving to push Lightwave - who'd recharged in her chair since they'd arrived – outside with them. "It's not many steps out there. We're well within your limits." She smiled brighter and with relief, when the white and yellow bot smiled happily at the suggestion.

"I do like it out here so much better then inside," Firestorm said, sitting obediently down in the chair that had clearly been left close to the doors, just for her. She rested a hand for a moment over her middle – which surely had expanded already to near the limit of what any bot's metal body, with its hard painted armour, could do – and watched as Shortwave parked Light' with some thought about it, her back to the railing and in the far corner, to avoid blocking the door that lead back inside.

"She... recharges a lot," the mini-bot said after a moment, watching little Lightwave as she napped on, undisturbed as ever, in the sunshine. The damaged youngling did seem to be sleeping more then half the time Firestorm saw her.

"She does," Shortwave answered, matter of fact, but still slightly regretful at the very same time. "Just being awake for a while seems to tire her out again quickly." She looked at Firestorm and her large mid section.

"You are... sure there's only one in there?"she asked, only half joking.

"I'm very sure," Firestorm answered with a chuckle of laughter and a shake of her head. "And anyway, two would never fit!"

"I'm still just as overjoyed as ever just to know that Soundwave is going to be a creator. And with a bot as wonderful and absolutely perfect for him as you are, for the carrier," Shortwave told her, meaning it and smiling. She reached out and lightly rested her own hand on her son's nearly-mate's middle, and laughing a little, adding, "whether there's one on the way or four of them."

"Four?" Firestorm exclaimed, suddenly horrified at the mere thought. She knew that Shortwave had been joking of course. But she shuddered a little anyway, wondering if it was actually possible for a bot to find themselves carrying that many at a time. Two was the most she'd heard of, but that was far from uncommon.

"Soundwave told me you slapped him one day," she mused. And almost immediately, she burst into laughter without knowing exactly what was so funny about that exactly.

"Indeed I did," Shortwave replied with barely a pause. And she was quickly laughing too in spite of the suddenly half serious look on her face-plate. "He's my youngling, no matter how long he's lived. And he had better believe I'd let him have it good for deciding to run off on the love of his life! Sure he may have found someone else eventually. It is a changing and fast growing world out there. But he'd never ever find another you, Firestorm. And I've truly come to believe you're a one of a kind special sort of bot."

"Well it certainly means everything that you chased him back to me," Firestorm replied, grinning and grateful. "He's been so happy since he's been home."

"Soundwave never did have a good life, Firestorm," Shortwave said, her tone entirely serious now as she looked her in the optics. "You know that of course. I may have been far too young then to have been a carrier at all. And I was. But I loved him more then anything in life, and I tried so hard to make his life as close to amazing as I could. Those early years were something close to good once in a while... and those are the times he talks to me about so much now. But still his life was never wonderful. And he's suffered far more than even I'll ever really understand. His life here with you... a bot who's loved him from the day she first saw him... this little apartment to live and be like anybot... this the is the first time he's known what it means to be happy. And... I know he left you once, because he didn't understand that he was good enough for what he had."

"I tried to save him once," Firestorm said slowly, reflecting. "I knew how the war for Cybertron had almost ruined him along with so many others. And... I figured maybe if I just loved him enough..." she shook her head a little. "I was young and silly. And I finally understood one day years ago, he doesn't need saving. No one does. He just needs me to be his best friend, and understand that sometimes things happen."

"You're a smart young bot," Shortwave said, smiling a second before that smile turned to a grin. "So... how is that grand creation of mine?"

"He's... good," Firestorm answered. And she thought for a second to the sure she had everything right. "He'll be early. That's pretty well a given now. But he's big... and he's healthy. Ratchet says if we can just go ten more days, the youngling should be just fine if he's born anytime..."

"You need to start a countdown then," Shortwave said, still smiling. "That will give you motivation... besides it might be fun."

"Soundwave's started one already." Firestorm said, laughing as she pointed back inside, and toward a little screen he'd hung on the wall near the sofa and linked remotely to his computer console. It currently displayed a bright 'Ten days' in blue Cybertronian code, complete with a somewhat goofy digital icon clearly meant to represent a bot baby kicking it's legs and waving its arms, below it.

"He started at twelve..." Firestorm explained. Laughing because now Shortwave had started to laugh. "The day we got that news. He updates the number every morning... and if you watch for a bit you'll see the baby icon nap for a while..."

"Soundwave is just as excited as you are by now," Shortwave remarked, laughing louder and grinning. Surprise and relief showed easily in her laughter, and Firestorm just nodded, amused.

"He built the little recharging basket," she said. "And bought him twice as many washing rags and towels as we'll ever need from the market... plus two sets of bedding and too many blankets." She laughed again, grinning. "He's started a poll among the Autobots too, promising bragging rights to the bot to guess correct on the gender and come closest on paint colour."

"Well, I want in on that," Shortwave exclaimed, close to shocked at hearing of it for only the first time then. She paused for a second to consider and then said slowly, "tell him to put me down for boy youngling... Dark blue paint."

"You think he'll be blue?" Firestorm asked, smiling at the thought. She knew most bots had guessed the little bot would be almost entirely her own pale yellow instead.

"I'm confidant," Shortwave answered, smiling her confidence.

"You can probably give your guess to Soundwave yourself," Firestorm told her, thinking. "He just hurried into work for a bit to pick up some case files to work on at home, and to talk with Ultra Magnus. He'll be home any time. Oh... and he's stopping at the sweet shop because I told him this morning I was craving iron jellies. I told him he didn't need to bring me any, but..."

"But he will, because he loves you more than enough to want to make you smile," Shortwave said firmly. And she smiled a little for a second, before her look suddenly turned momentarily just a little sad. "I'm thankfully every day now to know that youngling of mine found the bot whose spark was so clearly meant for him. We don't all find ours. I never found mine... though I suppose a world divided for centuries into warring factions, would make that far more difficult..."

"What about Blast' and Light's creator?" Firestorm dared to ask. And Shortwave just chuckled back, shaking her head just a little.

"He was a good bot," she said, smiling again as she remembered him so clearly. "A great bot in fact. He was wonderful... amazing. He made me laugh so hard I often cried, and we had the most amazing conversations. And... if I dare say so, the interfacing was certainly never boring either. And we did of course create two wonderful young bots together. He was the best creator ever to Blastwave. And though he barely lived to know Lightwave at all, I know he would have loved her just as if she'd been like any other child."

Shortwave paused then, again in her musing, and sighed before she slowly spoke again. "I did truly love him... Flightpath, his name was. And I don't doubt for a second he loved me. But it was the love of a couple of bots who had everything in common and shared a couple of younglings together. The love of a pair that had both been content to settle for something comfortable and convenient."

"Well... it's certainly not too late to find that true love you missed, now!"

"I'm... not exactly looking for it Firestorm."

"I know. But maybe you should be... any bot could love you. And Blast' and Light' too."

"Oh Firestorm," Shortwave muttered, shaking her head again, looking out idly over the patio railing. She laughed just a little. "I fear you really have been cooped up in her for too long. You have too much time to daydream."

"Why?" Firestorm asked, doubtful.

"I'm an old bot already. Not ancient by any means of course. But not young either. And my family is just so complicated. I come as a package deal, and that will never change... I wouldn't dream of wanting it to..."

"What about... Ratchet!" The words had left Firestorm's mouth the very instant she'd thought about it. And she only giggled with amusement when Shortwave stared blankly in her direction.

"The head of the hospital's medbay?" She questioned, only after she'd sat blinking in disbelief for several long moments.

"Firestorm," she continued on a moment later, her head still shaking with her dismay. "Ratchet is a war hero... a leader of a team. A trusted high ranked, educated bot who's done so much good for the world he loves. Why in the world would he want a thing to do with some nobody like me? Besides, what makes you think I have a thing in common with some medical genius, of any bot on Cybertron?"

"What makes you think you don't?" Firestorm countered, grinning like a youngling just the way she was so good at doing. And Shortwave shook her head again, laughing.

She might have spoken again in another moment or two. May well have told Firestorm that she was surely being silly and both of them knew it. But Lightwave had woken up strapped tightly into her chair. Her little optics were open when she looked in her direction. And as always, Shortwave wanted to hold the youngling on her lap instead of leaving in strapped in for no reason. So she stood up quickly to unstrap her from the harnesses that held her safely in place and seated upright, and lifted her into her arms before sitting again with the heavy youngling resting calmly against her front panels.

"Hi, Light'," Firestorm grinned the the youngling, who gave a tiny hint of a whir under an intake at the acknowledgement.

"Knockout thinks perhaps Light' can learn to communicate," Shortwave explained suddenly. And she smiled as she did so. "It's not going to anything like us of course... use of a sort of simple picture board perhaps. She'll never speak and we all know that. But... he's convinced she understands so much of what bots say, not just to her but to each other too. He says that if she only had a way to make her needs and even her opinions known..." she stooped speaking for a while to consider. And finally she shook her head, regretful.

"It's sad to think she may well have been far more aware of herself all these years than we could only have assumed, and we talked to her, but never even thought much of trying to talk _with_ her..." she mused sadly. "Her condition is so bad she can't even express anything we would have taken for frustration..." Her expression slowly brightened though, and she mused in a hopeful tone, "Just imagine if one day, with a lot of work and patience of course, Light' really could express herself even a little... tell us all how she feels... what she wants."

"You clearly do your best, and I know you always have," Firestorm said, smiling a little. She reached out to hold one of Lightwave's tiny hands between both of hers. And gently she bent and unbent each small finger joint carefully, exactly like she'd so easily learned to do from Blastwave. "Anybot can see how much you love her. And surely Lightwave knows it too."

"She loves to be acknowledged," Shortwave said, smiling down at her damaged youngling laying on her lap. She watched Firestorm, who went on gently bending and unbending tiny fingers, and nodded approval. "It was Blastwave that insisted she valued the attention of others, long before I even thought a thing about it. He talked to her just like any sibling before I ever even thought to tell him too. From the day he first saw her, he was just so good at relating to her... far better even than I was for the first many years..."

"Blast' goes to school in the youngling centre now?" Firestorm asked, curious about him at once, at the mention of his name. Unlike his sister, he was seldom with his carrier on her frequent visits. And she would have liked to see him a little more often.

"He does..." Shortwave sat a moment quiet and thinking. "I worry about him so much more than I thought I would. He doesn't talk much... not even to me. But he does talk to Lightwave. He'll sit and chat with her for ages... tell her all about his day, his life... the good, the bad, the absolutely terrible... That youngling never has cared less that she'll never say a word. I don't mean to listen in. But I sometimes over hear him talking anyway... I hear him tell her how he spends his fuel breaks alone... how he did the last group project by himself because no one else would work with him... He's lonely. He's sad, and lost on his own home world. And Lightwave is the only bot he really wants to talk to."

"Blast' will be fine," Firestorm said. She smiled and her tone said she only hoped she was truly right in her assurance. "He'll find his way here. Everyone does eventually."

* * *

"So, what seems to be the trouble, today?" Ratchet questioned, calm as ever and smiling assurance while he pulled common day to day medical equipment from its place in a cupboard across from the repair table.

And Arcee, sitting on said repair table, legs dangling over the side to hand above the floor, frowned with the embarrassment of most any bot over simple injuries.

"My wrist... my hand..." she mumbled trying to explain when she wasn't quite sure which exactly she'd injured at all while everything ached including her right hand fingers.

"Let's have a look then," Ratchet told her. He lifted her right hand gently up from where she'd left it sitting in her lap, and looked clearly apologetic when she frowned with pain at the motion of it.

"Bend your fingers," he told her. And she tried but she could barely move the first three of them at all.

"Ratchet, I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head slightly. She'd never liked being fussed over much in the least. And just being a patient made her just as uncomfortable as it always did. She'd only gone in at all, because the pain she was in told her it may well have been significant. She frowned with dismay, when the old bot took a second to strap an energon pressure cuff around her left arm, before he reached to quickly start the machine. But she said nothing about it, knowing full well that every patient of Ratchet's got nearly full work-ups on visits, whether they needed it or not. And she most certainly did not need it. "I'm sure this slight nothing at all is waste of your time."

"It certainly isn't nothing, Arcee," Ratchet scolded her at once in a serious tone. "You can barely bend those fingers... you're visibly in pain. And for you we know that's got to be bad." He smiled again with assurance, as he placed her hand down, rested on the work table he'd dragged over on it's wheels. "How did you do this to yourself?"

"I... slipped in my wash station," Arcee explained. She shook her head, more embarrassed then ever, Finally she managed to laugh a little, sure that for Ratchet, who'd spend so much of his career in wartime, her own case was surely almost too uninteresting.

"Came down on that hand to break your fall?" the medic guessed easily. And Arcee, struggling not to wince hard while he gently bent and unbent her fingers before he tired to turn her wrist a little bit, nodded.

"Not that I ever mind you coming to see me of course," Ratchet said, obviously just making conversation as he scanned her joints and digits. "I'm just surprised you didn't simply have Knockout look you over..."

"Knockout isn't home..." Arcee explained. She shook her head then, suddenly feeling truly ridiculous, as she muttered. "I guess I still hope it's really nothing at all, and he'll never even need to know his bondmate was a Bulkhead level clumsy oaf this morning..."

Ratchet just shook his head right back, frowning as he answered. "He'll know you were injured the second he sees you."

"Yeah..." Arcee frowned, still embarrassed and agreeing. She looked up then at the old bot, asking cautiously, "so, what's my damage report look like?"

"You see that data pad there, Arcee?" the old medic said instead of an answer. And Arcee, puzzled but sure it must have been of obvious importance, looked around, and finally spotted the pad he must have meant laying discarded on the top of a cabinet to her left

"That one?" she gestured to it with her optics, and saw the medic nod his head.

"Can you reach it for me?"

"Uhh... sure..." Arcee turned to the left, grabbing for the pad on the cabinet easily with her uninjured hand.

She barely had it in her hand though, and certainly hadn't yet turned back around to hand it off to the old bot, before he yanked hard on her damaged wrist in a fast forward motion. Pain shot through her wiring partway up her arm and nearly reaching her shoulder. And Arcee, gasping once in shock, nearly sent the data pad she still held flying from the cabinet top.

"Wh... what... did you...?" she tried to ask, finally turning to offer him the data pad, which Ratchet quite surprisingly tossed onto his work table clearly unneeded as soon as he'd taken it from her.

"Move your fingers," he ordered her gently with a smile of assurance again, as her sudden stabs of shooting pains subsided again.

She looked up, wide – optic'd with both utter surprise and a flood of great relief when her fingers bent and unbent again easily.

"You had misaligned your wrist joint when you fell onto it," Ratchet explained simply. "This of course in turn pinched some wires to your fingers." He took a second then to rest a hand lightly on her shoulder panel, looking at her with slight concern.

"It was an easy enough fix... though certainly made easier with a little distraction," he assured her, smiling a little. "You alright?"

"Fine... thank you," Arcee answered back smiling herself, because her wrist, though slightly achy, certainly did feel better now.

She moved to get to her feet, and stopped, remembering only then that she was still attached to the energon pressure monitor – which the old bot now had his optics on intently, with her file open in his hand and obviously ready to make a quick note of her readings. She settled back into her seated position, knowing full well there was little sense in arguing even as he reset the machine and seemed to be looking for a second read from it, while he shook his head, uncertainly.

"Ratchet?" she questioned, dismayed when he took a third try at a pressure reading, and this time he frowned over it.

"Your energon pressure is... most definitely running slightly high..." the medi-bot mumbled. He looked serious as he grabbed for his scanner again, this time scanning her full body instead of just her wrist and hand. And he frowned again, his look so clearly uncertain when he reached her chest panels. Slowly though he moved the scanner again, moving down her body before he moved back up, and paused again frowning.

"Arcee..." he said, his voice now so clearly hesitant. "Lay back please."

Arcee complied as easily as she did, only because she trusted Ratchet entirely. And she laughed a little, shaking her head at his strange fretting by now over something that obviously had not a thing to do with her slightly dislocated wrist joint. Still his behaviour made her edgy. And she wrung her hands a little now folded in front of her, looking around the medbay in discomfort from the slightly too hard surface of the repair table.

"I... think I'd best comm Knockout away from the youngling ward," Ratchet muttered, in a serious tone that made Arcee truly nervous then. "Or... perhaps you should do it."

"Why?" she asked him, hiding her anxiety now behind bad humour. "You gonna tell us both together that I've got months to live before I off line from spark disease?"

"Don't even joke about that, Arcee," the medic said serious, as her cast her a look. And Arcee dropped her gaze a little, understand entirely that such sick humour was indeed not exactly funny. And particularly not so in a hospital.

"Then what it is?" she asked. Her unease was grating on her wiring, and she tried to sit up, even as he gently pushed her back down again, resetting his scanner for a second, more detailed scan. She shook her head, insistent and stubborn. "Tell me first. Let me hear this on my own, before we give Knockout a near spark attack in the middle of his fraggin' duty shift, with a call to come and see his bondmate in the medbay..."

"It most certainly is your spark, you're right about that." Ratchet stood, still and serious, before a strange hint of a smile showed on his face-plate. He scanned her again, as she'd known he'd planned to, and his smile grew a little, where she knew a medic should normally have looked concerned. "It is however certainly not spark disease... far from it!" He offered her hand, and when she took it, (using only her good left hand of course) he pulled her back to sitting, with a full on grin now across his face-plate.

"Arcee, you are... carrying."

"What?" Arcee found herself immediately close to gasping for an intake through her shock and disbelief. And when his words finally managed to fully catch up to her, and she'd realized exactly what it was he'd just said, just sat still and nearly frozen, fearing that if she so much as moved she would realize she'd misheard him. "Ratchet... what...?"

"It's still so early on," the medic explained. And Arcee heard him through a haze of something close to static. "If I hadn't checked your pressure and gotten suspicious because of it, you would not have had any reason to even question a thing yet. But I have no doubt you'll show symptoms soon." He paused then, and chuckled a known little chuckling, clearly knowing exactly what she might have asked next if only should could still form words through her shock. He lay a hand gently on her shoulder panel again. "And no, Arcee. You didn't hurt the newspark in the least by falling in your wash station today. The tiny spark is still so very small, it's just barely visible on my scanner. At this early stage it will have only just started to spin perhaps a day or two again. But it's spinning beautifully in there and I would bet it didn't even notice. And Arcee...?"

"Yes?" Arcee stopped her mile a second joyful chattering on, to look again at the old bot – who looked at her, serious again through his smile.

"I don't think I need to ask you this question... though as a medical officer, I'm obligated. You are okay with this situation? I do know of course this youngling is absolutely wanted."

"Yes," Arcee said. A smile broke through her shock by now, and she was certainly she must have stood grinning like a youngling for at least a good moment... before rushing forward to hug the consequently fluttered old medic, and forgetting that fast movements might just make her wrist ache again.. "Yes, I'm okay. Perfectly okay. And yes, absolutely wanted more than anything! Thank you! Thank you!"

She slid down from the repair table then, to stand of the floor on shaking knee joints. And for several moments she just stood there shocked and overjoyed, and terrified to believe the news was really true at all. Finally, she raised a hand to rest over her spark chamber, in a still futile attempt to sense the child inside of it, still to small to put out all but the faintest of energy signatures.

"You... you've got to comm Knockout..." she managed to mutter after another moment more. But she stopped speaking at once, because the door to the medbay slid open in the very second, to reveal her bondmate standing on the other side of it.

Knockout's appearance had so clearly been nothing more then unintended and absolutely perfect timing. Because he walked into the medbay and halfway across the room toward the largest of the storage cabinets, obviously in need of medical supplies to restock his own smaller cabinets on his ward. But he stopped suddenly in the middle of the room, clearly cluing in only then to anything around him. And he quickly spun partway around, clearly close to losing his balance in doing so, and catching himself with a corner of a worktable, thankfully just within his reach. Then with steps just as fast as he dared try walking, he hurried to stand beside his mate in front of the repair table she'd been on.

"What did you wish to comm me for?" he asked quickly, concerned as he looked from his bondmate to his teammate and back again. "Arcee... what happened? Why did you come to medical?"

"It's nothing serious," Ratchet said, answering for her quickly, with a simply shake of his head and a hint of a smile. "Your bondmate here just had a little fall."

"A fall?" Knockout's tone was one of clear alarm now. And he looked his mate over carefully. "Arcee, what happened?"

"I... slipped in the wash station," she told him slowly. She was embarrassed all over again despite her newfound excitement of the news she had to share. And she resisted the urge to look at the floor, dismayed as ever over one clumsy slip on wet tiles, after endless years of running and tumbling so gracefully with blasters in battle. She shook her head, and sighed. "Slightly dislocated wrist joint. It's nothing..."

"So...?" Knockout was clearly confused entirely by now, if not just as clearly relieved over his understanding that her injury was indeed one that needed barely a second thought about it. "Why comm me if it's really nothing?"

"Because..." Arcee stood still for a second, unsure of exactly what to say, before a smile spread over her face-plate. Knockout looked at her half sideways now, and truly confused by her grinning. But she

just reached for his hand, and placed it gently over her spark chamber, smiling even brighter as she found her words again. "Because... of the newspark."

"The... newspark?" Knockout muttered, his tone momentarily near baffled before switching fast to complete shock and near disbelief. "Arcee... are we... really...?"

"The tiny spark would never even have been discovered yet, if Arcee hadn't slipped and fallen," Ratchet said, his hand resting lightly on Knockout's shoulder panel and a grin across his face-plate. "My congratulations to both of you."

"We... we finally did it... just when we'd truly given up," Arcee mumbled. And just as she'd done so much that past year, she burst out again into coolant tears – though this time they were happy ones.

"We did! We did!" Knockout said back, almost shouting as he did. And he grabbed his mate suddenly, pulling her tight against him with her arms wrapped around her, and causing her to squeal with happy surprise as she wiped at her optics.

"Our second child with be a playmate for 'Bee and Speedy's forth, and their fifth," Knockout exclaimed. "And... Firestorm and Soundwave's youngling! And we still have the old newborn things. You see, Arcee... I told you to keep them a while longer. I think I can build a frame this time... no. I know I can do it. And Cybershock will finally have a sibling. She'll be so excited. She's old enough to help us name the newspark!"

"How are you going to tell her?" Arcee asked, speaking quickly the second her mate paused in the midst of his rapid-fire rambling.

"We could..." Knockout started to answer at once. But he paused again the second he'd started. And for a good moment, he just stood still, thinking hard. Finally, the smile spread over his face-plate again, and he let go of Arcee to look her in the optics.

"We'll think of something! And no matter what, she'll love it!"

* * *

"Did I tell you yet how amazing you look tonight?" Knockout questioned, grinning as he held out a hand to help his mate into her usual seat in the front row of the racetrack stands. He watched her carefully as she sat, and then finally he let go of her hand, only so that he could pull a small bag of her favourite soft energon candies out of his storage compartment, and offer them to her.

"No," Arcee answered, grinning back. She took the sweets from him with a far brighter grin and opened the bag slowly. "But you told me this morning... and last night... and yesterday morning..."

"And you only look better and better with each passing day," Knockout answered. He felt the slight chill of the evening air, and pulled her close to his frame at once, with his heater running, and thoroughly enjoying fretting over her just as much as she might let him.

"I feel better with each passing day," she said, smiling up at him, enjoying his warmth and reaching out to hold his hand in hers. "Yesterday was wonderful. Today is amazing. I just... I can't believe I'm really carrying again!"

"It really is incredible," Knockout replied. And he hugged her just a little tighter. "There's so much to do, and I can't wait to do it all. We need to build a frame, rearrange our recharge room... I wonder what we'll call the newspark..." he paused then for a moment, just hold her and smiling like a youngling. "Cybershock still doesn't know a thing..."

"We'll tell her tonight," Arcee said, decisively and still smiling brightly. "After the race."

She looked for a moment over the track, where seven 'amateur' league bots, were currently near bumper to bumper on their third lap of ten – at at Cybershock, who sat on the ground at the track's far side, appearing to chat with Hotwire and Switchgear while they revved their engines in the bot modes to warm up for their own up coming race. Arcee waved at her youngling happily, thought he knew full well, the little bot thought she looked ridiculous and doing it. Cybershock clearly didn't see her through, busy instead with her friends and her warm-ups, and watching the older bots race. And Arcee tried hard not to feel disappointed.

"You remember what I said years ago when we agreed we'd try for this second youngling?" Knockout said, his voice pulling her attention back to him again. "You be careful... any sign of trouble, anything at all, and you tell me in under five seconds. Or you call Ratchet. No running, no hard training... no shooting your blasters... sit down as much as you can while you're at work..."

"No heavy lifting. No speeding in vehicle mode. No... risky negotiations with armed bots over refugee hostages... or back alley brawling with the wreckers?"

"Arcee. I'm serious."

"I know," Arcee moved to rest her head on her bond mate's shoulder panel. And she smiled up at him again. "I promise to behave. I know it's still high risk for me to carry again. But, I feel good about this one.."

Their happy conversation was interrupted then by bulkhead. Who sidestepped, clumsily back into the seat Arcee has saved for him beside her, with all three containers of their flavoured fuel teetering badly between his two big hands.

What a turn out!" he exclaimed. And just as soon as he was relieved of two of the energon containers, she gestured around wildly at the crowded, that was quickly filling the stands to near maximum capacity.

"Turn out indeed," Knockout said, his own grin growing brighter again. "Big night for the racers."

That evening, the Younglings' junior league was about to race it's qualifying runs in the first race leading up the championship. And they were doing so, right along with both the 'amateur' and 'masters' classes, all in that very same evening. There would be awards too, handed out to various bots of all three classes at the end of the races. And New Cybertron many excited racing fans sat jammed packed to somewhere very close to full capacity in the stands – most of them chattering loudly by now among themselves and laughing while they munched on snacks and drank from containers of favoured energon.

"Hellooo," called out Speedbeaker, who walked into the stands with her pair of twins following close behind her – Tailfin held between them both by his little outstretched hands, as he wobbled along just as fast as he could go. And Arcee waved back at once, a grin on her face-plate all over again, as she sat staring at the newborn, Speedbreaker carried in her arms.

"This is Kickstart," Speedy said. And Arcee looked the tiny bot over the second her friend had dropped him, grinning, into her eagerly waiting arms. The little youngling – just like Tailfin, was close to a tiny version of their carrier, with her bright orange paint and shiny chrome highlights. And though Arcee knew he'd been born eight days before, she was seeing him only now for the first time, and was overjoyed to have finally gotten to meet him.

"He's adorable," she said. And instantly her own spark flared with joy as she thought again of her own newspark – every hint of the usual underlying sadness she felt when she held another bot's youngling, entirely nonexistent now.

"My turn," Knockout said with a grin of his own, as he gently snatched up the newborn from his mate's lap. And so Arcee immediately picked up a now slightly pouting Tailfin, who stood on the ground by her knees, and clearly feeling just a little left out.

"'Wace, wace!" Tailfin shouted loudly, tiny fingers pointing at the track nearby. And he bounced in Arcee's lap, his tiny feet kicking in obvious excitement. "Daddy! Brodder! Wace!"

"Yeah, 'Fin," said Sparkplug, smiling at him after she and Hubcap had both nodded polite greetings to Arcee, Knockout, and Bulkhead. "Hotwire's race is first I think. Then Daddy's, with the master's class."

"Get-em! Get-em!" Tailfin yelled, grinning as he watched the racetrack, still filled with the racing 'amateur' class. His tiny engine, inside a frame far to small to transform and drive, revved loudly. And all three Autobots around him laughed loudly at once, because he sounded so much like a racing fan.

"Speedy," Arcee said, turned around on the bench, to talk to her friend, who had sat with her family in empty seats behind hers. She grabbed her arm gently, and shook it a little, like a youngling, in her growing excitement. "Promise me you won't say a word about this to anyone yet!"

"A word around what?" Speedbreaker looked down at her from the bench above, clearly confused. And her expression was a nearly hilarious mix of concern, curiosity, and something close to near panic. Arcee just looked for a moment, between her friend's newborn and her bondmate beside her, as her smile grew bigger again.

"I'm... carrying again," she said, still in a whisper. And she held up a hand at once, adding still so quietly. "No one knows yet... not even Cybershock..."

Speedy just nodded, her own joyful grin quickly spreading across her face-plate. And slowly, she raised a hand to her mouth, pulling a couple fingers across in an Earth gesture she'd clearly picked up once from Autobots, meant to represent 'zipping' her mouth closed.

"That's wonderful," she said, a second later, and in a quiet whisper of her own. She sat watching the track for a long moment, as the racers still on it completed their race in a finish so close that for a while, a few stood around in their bot modes just behind the finish line arguing with each other and two officials, hands waving and frowns on their face-plates.

"You're waited so long, I know you wanted one so much... our babies will be playmates! And Firestorm and Soundwave's too!" Speedy was so clearly well beyond excited now. But she managed to whisper in spite of her emotions, while she bounced like a youngling in her own seat.

"Here we go, here we go," Hubcap shouted suddenly. He jumped to his feet, for a reason that would never be obvious, nearly fell in his haste to do so, and promptly sat down again, while Sparkplug laughed at him.

"Wace! Wace!" yelled Tailfin again.

And Arcee settled back into her seat beside her mate, watching just as intently as he always had.

Eleven youngling racers drove slowly onto the track, behind a race official. And though they were all in their vehicle modes, it was so easy to guess that each and every one of them was smiling brightly. Each one shown in the light of the sun, low in the sky, their fresh coats of wax reflecting the light. And their small engines revved and roared, over the sounds of a few of their confidant laughs, at being allowed to drive the track single file and allowed to simply show off their miniature alt modes.

For a few metres, Speedtrap drove backwards, having spun himself around to face the exact wrong direction before the official had a chance to stop him. Turbocharge, Takedown, and Headlight, the trio of brothers on the track, and kicked up dust at the back of the line, and Cybershock simply accelerated fast, moving ahead of the pack before weaving from one side of the track to the other, showing just what a Smart-car could do, before she dropped back into line again.

"That's my girl, that's my girl!" Knockout cheered loudly, pointing his finger and waving his hand in her direction for anyone who somehow still may not have known exactly which youngling was his, to know it for sure. And beside him Arcee shook her head, laughing just a little and sure he might just have jumped to his feet in his excitement, if such sudden fast moves were possible and safe for him to make.

She watched in silence then, leaning forward in her seat, her attention on Cybershock entirely as they little bots began to race. She watched Cybershock take the lead quickly. And she watched as Speedtrap took it just as fast. For a second Takedown seemed like he would overtake them both... then Cybershock was ahead again at the start of their second lap of the track. Tiny engines roared louder, each one working to his maximum potential, and each small bot pushing themselves harder than any ever had before.

Arcee cringed just a little, against her bondmate's armour, as the small racers reached speeds into the low triple digits. And she crigned harder, then grinned, as Cybershock and Hotwire rounded a turn together nearly side and side, and almost banged against each other hand, but didn't. And Cybershock pulled away, back into the lead again, with Speedtrap speeding to catch up, and Hotwire backing off, intimidated. At the back of the small pack, Switchgear tried as hard as she could – a small green dune buggy – with her engine revving high. But she couldn't keep up, and neither could Turbocharge. Arcee knew though it didn't seem to matter much to either one of them, because she heard both laughing together as they raced hard against each other at the back of the pack, both clearly determined to simply not be the very last to finish. Hotwire had soon lost the pack too. And he dropped in line before Switch' and Turbo'. A second later, it was clear Cybershock was winning now, and not just by a tiny bit.

Arcee leapt to her feet, hands clapping hard, cheering loudly over the noise of the other bots who cheered on the racers all around her. And she would never know what made her look up to the sky in that moment.

She felt only confusion at first, when she caught her first glimpse of the large shuttle coming in fast and so low in the sky. She watched carefully as it swung around a short distance away, its massive weight causing obvious drag, causing it to look for a moment like it might tip itself over. And slowly, it drifted back toward the racetrack.

"Knockout..." she said, tapping her mate lightly on his shoulder panel, looking up again to direct his attention to the sky above. "I haven't heard a thing about returning refugees today..."

She watched her mate first in baffled confusion, and then with fast growing horror, as he stared up at the shuttle for only a momen,t before he looked around at the tightly packed, still cheering crowd, his optics wide with his obvious alarm.

"Down!" Knockout screamed, over the sound of the still oblivious crowd of racing fans. "Close to the ground, under these benches! And cover your heads!"

Arcee didn't see how many bots may have followed his sudden shouted directions, or if any might have even heard him – because he'd shoved her down to the floor of the stands before she could even react. And he'd given her just enough time to shift Tailfin – who she still held – in front of her safely and place her wight over him in a position of protection.

"What the... frag?" Speedbreaker muttered behind them. And Arcee lifted her head, still confused herself, reacting by now only on her still too well trained battle instincts, to see Bulkhead yanked Speedy down beside her twins.

There was a blast then. Enough to shake the stands. And just a second later three more followed. Arcee stayed still for a moment, tiny Tailfin tucked under her frame. She heard his whimpering cries, and felt his small body shake a little with his terrified sobs, and that was enough to make her pay attention. She could hear the sound of jet engines roaring loud above the crowd, and dared to lift her head, looking up, and finally sitting up on the ground, to see the shuttle retreating fast.

"Knockout!" she screamed, as the crowd all around her erupted into chaos, some running for the gates pushing and shoving in their panic - and others sitting still and screaming to each other in a steady wave of horrifying noise.

She looked over Speedbreaker's youngling in her arms sighing at once with her relief when he appeared terrified by unharmed. Speedy was fine too, sitting on the bench she'd never left, Hubcab held tight against her frame with one arm, and Sparkplug with the other. All three trembled hard, and Speedbreaker gasped out her shock in horrified hollow intakes, as she held her middle children tighter.

"Knockout!" Arcee cried out again. She finally stopped him, face-plate down on the ground beside his seat. And after a frantic second that seemed like forever, she finally saw him move, struggling to his knees, with a clearly undamaged newborn Kickstart in his arms.

"Astrotrain!" he growled, gesturing toward the fast retreating shuttle high above, with his right hand shaking in his own clear shock.

"Arcee! Knockout!" Bulkhead's voice rang out loudly, close beside her. And she turned, blinking a little at her big green teammate. She dragged herself to her feet and stared at him, as everything seemed to spin around her. She heard his words then, and nothing else besides.

"Arcee... Knockout... those... whatever he tried dropping on our heads... they've hit the racetrack!"

 **Notes / I fear this chapter may have been just a little, hmm... boring maybe. Way too much conversation and not much actually happening through most of it. I thought and rethought this one, debated pulling one scene of another to use later instead. But I decided it just wouldn't make any sense that way. And anyway, as you can easily guess, things are going down in the next one.**

 **Also, I do hope I have not already managed to create a too out of character Astrotrain. I'm a far bigger fan of 'Prime' and 'Armada' then the 80s TV series, and my hope is not to have royally goofed this guy up in trying to use him as our new threat to Cybertron. I'm always open to feedback of course. If any fans want to correct me, I'll listen.**


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes/ My apologies for the delay in updating. I've had some issues (thankfully now fixed) with my computer. In any case this chaapter is a longer one. And a lot happens, some of it certainly not good. I don't see a ned to post any real warnnings or anything... just be aware this is not another of the fluffy type chapters I've been posting lately.**

 **As always, feedback is most loved and appreciated. And I will get the next one up as soon as it's complete and edited.**

"Speedbreaker," Knockout said, turning to his bondmate's best friend, who still sat behind him near frozen, in the racetrack stands. He watched the crowd all about them, screaming and yelling, rushing forward while grabbing and yanking at each other''s body panels, all while pushing and shoving to get down and to the exit gates. "Stay put. You'll never make it out safely right now with all those younglings."

He felt the motion of a tiny bot beginning to wiggle and squirm against his body, And it was only then that he remembered he still held Speedy's newborn, Kickstart. Speedbreaker was reaching up from her seat on the bench. And her actions made sense now. Knockout quickly placed the baby gently back into her arms.

"Wh... where is... Hotwire?" Speedbreaker muttered helpless and beginning to shake and tremble, as she looked all around with wide open optics.

"Down there," Bulkhead said, looking around intently himself and so clearly ready to help anyone however he possibly could.

He waved a hand toward the track, where a small group of youngling racers sat huddled at the edge and sitting up in bot modes. There was Hotwire, clearly unharmed, and hugging a shaking crying Switchgear tight against his frame. Nearby sat Turbo' and Takedown, each hugged tightly by their oldest racing brother, Headlight. And then there was Speedtrap, and Airbrake and...

Cybershock! Knockout looked out again over the crowd of younglings his teammate was waving towards. His spark skipped a pulse and then another when he realized his own youngling was nowhere among them.

"Cybershock," Knockout exclaimed, shaking. And in that very second his bondmate grabbing hold of his arm with a small screaming cry, clearly realizing in the very same moment that Cybershock was unaccounted for.

"Knockout!" Arcee muttered, letting him go so that he could move again to look around. "Where is Cybershock?"

"I don't... know..." Knockout mumbled back his voice hesitant as his optics quickly scanned a badly damaged racetrack. And it dropped further when he finally caught sight of a red and pale blue form lying motionless on a still smooth section of the diving surface.

"There!" he cried, horrified and trying not to panic, as he moved to toward the fence hurrying to reach her. He looked back at his bondmate, reluctant. "Arcee, you need to help out with field first aid for anyone that needs it. I'll see to our youngling. This... this could be bad..."

Bumblebee had reached the little bot first. And it was obvious he'd nearly dumped the content's of his medkit over the ground accidentally in his haste to pull it open upside down.

"Knockout," Bumblebee said, looking up from his place, kneeling on the racetrack beside Cybershock. "I comm'd Ratchet for help, but he was of course already on his way as soon as he heard that something hit the track. He's bringing a number of the medical team down here with him to help those who need it. But this one..." he looked down again at Knockout's little bot – lying unmoving on the ground with her optics closed, but managing to whimper just a little as she struggled for an intake. "She may be the worst of it."

Knockout stared down for a good long moment, at his youngling daughter in fast growing horror and shock. Her arm was clearly broken badly. That was obvious at once, and it sure wouldn't have taken a medic to know it. The limb lay bent between the elbow and wrist at a place where no arm should bend. And the wrist joint lay facing upside down besides, indicating a very clear second brake much lower. And on top of it all, the shoulder joint sat badly, forced back at least several inches from where it should have sat inside the frame work. Her body was scraped up all over, making it clear enough that she'd slid hard across the ground for meters. And here and there were deep and bleeding gashes – the worst of which left her upper left leg nearly soaked with energon.

"Knockout," 'Bee said, slowly. And for just a second, his optic's met those of his teammate with obvious near despair. He held up his scanner in his hand. "There's energon leaking somewhere in her engine. A... a ruptured hose somewhere... it's got to be..."

"It's either the waste output or her fueling input hose," Knockout muttered shaking hard now as he stared, disbelieving at the tiny screen of Bumblebee's med scanner. It was impossible to tell on the scanner exactly which it was. But the amount of energon he saw where he shouldn't have seen it, made him want to cry with his despair.

"What do we do?" 'Bee asked, urgently and horrified himself. And Knockout, who''d barely heard the young student's shakily asked question at all, though his own horror, shook his head blinked his optics had, and forced himself to think like the medi-bot he was.

"We... need your energon line kit, 'Bee," he said, waving toward said kit, dumped from the medkit along with most everything else in the young student's haste. He tried to keep his voice steady but it was clearly no use at all. "Give her fuel to replace what... what she's losing the very best we can for now. Then we... we can use the line as well for pain medication. We need to wrap her damaged leg... stabilize her arm..."

"Dad.. dy?" Cybershock mumbled, shaky and quiet. Her optics blinked just a little before closing again. And she whimpered, cringing with pain.

"You're okay, baby girl," Knockout said relief and dread filling his spark in equal parts at the thought that she might slowly wake up instead of drifting completely into recharge. Still, with a slight shake of his head and a fast intake to calm himself, he placed his hands gently over the lower part of the youngling's undamaged arm and nodded quickly to his teammate who sat ready with the line equipment.

"Just a tiny pinch now, my girl," he said, cringing a little when the youngling immediately tried to yank her arm back, resisting the slight restraint in her half conscious confusion. "We're going to be quick, okay."

"No...nooo'dont'do...hurt..." Cybershock mumbled, barely moving now as her creator held her still.

"Got it," 'Bee said quickly. And indeed he clearly had and perfectly well. Still, he looked up shaking just a little, And Knockout understood at once just how much he always dreaded inflicting pain – however slight – on younglings.

"Daddy?" Cybershock mumbled, more coherent now. Her hand reached up slowly, as soon as it was free to move. And Knockout felt her fingers tighten around his with surprising strength just as soon as he had grabbed it.

"You with us now, baby girl?" he asked, assessing her level of awareness, and feeling his dread rise in spite of himself and his training, when he realized it was fast increasing.

"Y... yeah..." the little bot answered slowly. And it was plainly obvious in her small voice that she was fast becoming terrified. Her optics blinked again, slowly And after just a another brief second, both filled instantly with coolant tears.

"My arm hurts..." she mumbled, her voice shaking with her speak breaking cries. "My... legs hurts..." The little bot looked up at her creator, optics clouded with tears and barely appearing to focus at all. "Every... everything hurts."

"I know, my girl," Knockout answered, forcing his voice into a tone far more calm then he felt.

He watched, nodding approval as he watched the young student inject pain medication into the youngling bot's energon line. And immediately he smiled assurance.. "We've just got to let some medicine work, okay. Then you'll feel better."

"Daddy..." Cybershock asked, her voice quiet as she trembled with fright and stared up at him. Her hand held his tighter and her optics barely blinked. "Am I... off lining?"

The youngling's damages were bad. Knockout knew it And he knew his teammate beside him knew it too. Still, her injuries were fixable. And when he forced himself to think about it, he knew she wouldn't die. But for her to be terrified enough to ask him such a thing... to ask in a tone that told him she was serious... Instantly he felt his spark come close to breaking.

"Not even close, my girl," he said slowly. He forced another smile, and hoped just simply talking to her would be enough to hold her attention while 'Bee reached for a roll of mesh wrapping from his medkit and instantly began wrapping the little bot's energon soaked leg in temporary coverings.

"That hurts, that hurts!" Cybershock screamed horribly. And she gave a terrible wordless shriek, as the young student worked just as carefully as he could. Her optics opened wide again to stare at her creator's again, blinking a little with more tears. "Daddy..."

"I know, baby girl." Knockout said slowly, one hand still squeezed hard by his youngling's, and his free hand gently rubbing the front of her head piece, because he remembered that had always calmed her when she was much younger. He watched with dread as her small leg kicked weakly, almost too close to kicking 'Bee's hands away from her, before she shrieked again with pain and something a bit too close to near terror. "Shh... You need to relax, my girl, okay. Intake. Nice and slow..." the youngling was nearly gasping for an intake by then from her growing panic and pain. And slowly she began to calm down, obviously trying.

"Good girl," Knockout told her, still calm because he forced himself to stay that way. One hand stayed on her head piece all the while and the other hand was held tightly by hers. "I know it hurts. I know. You know 'Bee would never try to hurt you, my girl. But... I think we need to give you just a bit more medication, okay?" He exchanged looks with his teammate – clearly just as devastated as he was to realize she hadn't been given quite enough the first time. And he looked at the young student with assurance in his optics, telling him wordlessly that neither one of them could have guessed it right exactly

"Wh... what happened?" Cybershock asked, her confusion catching up to her, as her pain was finally lessened by the medication and allowed her to question a little. She tried to move a bit too, lifting her head up from the smooth surface of the track, and trying to look around her, before Knockout gently stopped her, fearing the real possibility of hidden damages she could easily make worse.

"Something hit the racetrack," he said, keeping it as simple as he possibly could without lying, but deciding all the same to say no more than that right then.

"Where... where's Mama?" the little bot questioned, struggling to look around her again, and clearly beginning too panic again. She gave another small but still spark-breaking little shriek of pain, and fought to pull her bleeding leg away as 'Bee worked just as gently as he clearly could, to pull the wrappings tight around it.

Knockout turned for moment, hating to do it. And quickly he located his bondmate. She sat on the edge of a bench four rows up into the stands, busy administering field first aid to some poor shaking refugee, who sat beside her silently with energon pouring from a gash across the front of his chest panel. She was shaking just as hard as he was, though so clearly trying hard to hide the fact. And she looked from the injured refugee to her own youngling on the racetrack and back again, so clearly torn between her duty and her child.

"Mama will see you just as soon as she can, my girl," Knockout said, turning back to the little bot at once. He tried to gently pull his hand free so that he could help to hold the youngling bot in place to help his teammate. But Cybershock was not letting go of him, and that was clear in a second. So instead he moved his free hand, to rest it against the side of her face-plate.

"Shh..." he said gently, when she gasped hard again for an intake again while chocking back a sobbing cry. "Hold still. That's my girl." He smiled a little, making sure to let the youngling see his face-plate clearly, and added slowly just because he knew it might just make her smile back, "You were winning the race, you know..."

"Owwww..." Cybershock cried, coolant tears forming in her optics again, and falling down her face-plate. But she did smile at least for a second.

"I know, sweetspark," Bumblebee said, his attention so obviously focused entirely on his work, while still speaking with compassion in his voice just as much as ever. "I know... I'm sorry."

"'Bee," Knockout said to his teammate, sighing with relief when he heard the familiar noise of Ratchet's blaring siren. He forced himself again to think like a medi-bot while still thinking like a creator all at once. And he held his little bot's hand tighter again, fully expecting her reaction of dread at what he had to say next. "Do you... feel confidant in powering her down?"

He watched the young student's confidant nod. But sure enough, his youngling laying on the ground stiffened at once, in growing panic all over again.

"Noooo..." she cried, once again in terror. Her optics locked on Knockout's and she lay for just a second almost frozen. "Daddy...no! Noooo..."

"Cybershock," Knockout answered patiently, firmly and calm. But he felt himself shaking all the same, and forced himself to hide it, or at least to do his best. "Ratchet is on his way to come and help us. We're going to strap you into a transport board, and you'll be driven to the medbay. But your arm is badly broken, baby girl... you're in so much pain already just laying on the ground. I could never just try to pick you up like this..."

"Daddy..." The little bot's blue optics never left his, and her hand held his tighter then before. "I'm... I'm... afraid..."

"I know, my girl. I know it's scary. Just lay still and intake. I'm right here beside you."

"Don't leave me... don't leave me..." the little bot held her creator's hand tighter. And again she fought a little for an intake.

"I'm not going anywhere," Knockout said, firmly and forcing calm more then ever in the face of his only child's panic. He watched, his spark sinking as his little bot looked around her frantically in obvious terrified panic "Optics on me, baby girl. Good little bot"

A light, hesitant tapping, done with an obviously small hand against his shoulder panel barely registered in his mind at all, at least at first. But when it kept up, growing just slightly more insistent, Knockout shook off his single minded focus just a little as his child finally powered down. And he slowly turned around.

Switchgear stood behind him on the racetrack, her small green hand reaching and ready to lightly tap him again for his attention. She looked so uncertain, shaken, still just as terrified as ever, and... determined.

"Is she... going to be okay?" she asked, optics falling on her small friend at once.

"She'll be fine, Switch,'" Knockout answered, with more forced confidence than ever just to hide his shaking from the little green bot.

"You... mean it?" Hotwire asked, his voice far more hesitant somewhere close by. And Knockout turned, with his spark sinking still further to see the little yellow youngling standing on the track beside Switch' coolant tears streaming down his face-plate.

########

Firestorm could hear sirens screaming somewhere on the south side of the city. And with growing dread, which only built by the second, she realized they were still seemingly no closer to stopping than they had been at least an hour before.

Pain tore through the front of her frame, from below her spark chamber to well below her middle. And she gasped out loud with her discomfort, as she sat in her chair in her living room, close to the window, with its curtains tightly closed, just listening to bots outside as they began talking to each other louder and louder, in their own clear panic because of the sirens.

She wished she'd told Soundwave that afternoon, she'd felt unwell before he'd left the apartment. But it hadn't seemed like anything to think much about just before he'd left. And they had both easily assumed he'd be right back anyway, with simple case files he'd gone to retrieve from his office. He'd been gone all evening though, obviously forced into dealing with... whatever it was that had happened just south of the city. And Firestorm could no longer deny to herself the fact that the newspark was ready to be born.

She'd tried already to make several calls on her commlink, trying Soundwave first of course – before she'd tried Shortwave, then Knockout, then Arcee, and finally Speedbreaker. And not a single one of them had picked up her call. Ultra Magnus was an obvious choice, because he could easily find Soundwave – who she needed home then no matter what had happened across the small crowded city. But his commlink was just as dead as the rest.

Firestorm, hungry for some fuel, despite her pain and her fast growing unease, pulled herself to her feet with the aid of the small table in front of her. And she'd managed to walk slowly, more then halfway to the energon dispenser before a pain worse then any before, made her stop, frozen to the spot gasping hard for an intake through her filter. She got the fuel then, working as fast as she could to fill the container, knowing pain would stop her again any second. And gratefully she took sip from it. Firestorm wondered then if she ought to have her additives too, and slowly she decided she should. The youngling she carried, could after all surely still benefit from them even while early in the process of being born. As another wave of pain – thankfully milder this time- rose up through her frame, she fumbled in a cupboard for a premixed additive pack from a box of them kept near the front. And the effort of her looking for it, distracted her a little from anything else.

"Soundwave," the mini-bot mumbled, helpless and suddenly fighting back tears of near despair. She sat herself back down in her chair, leaning forward just trying to ease the next flare of pain through her body, as tears came too her optics. "Where the frag... are you?"

She looked around her living room then. And her wet optics landed on the countdown screen that Soundwave had hung on the wall after he'd programmed it. 'Two days.' It was spelled out plainly in bright Cybertronian code. Two days until Ratchet's well decided 'safe point.' And even then the newspark would have been early by at least twenty days. For a good long moment, she sat, just staring at the countdown board and hoping with everything she ever had, that her child would somehow be okay.

Slowly she moved to key in another number over her commlink using a keypad she'd picked up from the table. Bulkhead, she decided, in growing panic. He certainly wouldn't mind a call to his commlink from her. And if nothing else he could surely tell her exactly what had happened on the south side of the city. But Bulkhead, like the others she'd been calling since the noise of screaming sirens started, did not respond to his buzzing comm.

"Please..." the mini-bot said, groaning out loud to no one at all, while her pain suddenly increased again, making her double over herself in her chair. "Help me..."

"Firestorm!" a voice yelled at the door of the apartment. And for a moment she barely heard it at all, through the effort it suddenly took her to fight back a scream as the youngling moved, shifting roughly inside her frame while another flare of pain ripped through her mid section. Blastwave... she recognized the voice of Soundwave's young brother all too slowly, as he began to bang urgently on the apartment door.

"Blast'..." she called back, wanting to hurry to door but sure she wouldn't make it halfway there before pain made her stop again. "Use the door code... I... I can't..."

"What's happening outside?" she asked the youngling bot, the second he'd gotten into the little apartment, and run toward the living room. Firestorm watched him as he kneeled hesitantly down on the floor beside her chair. And the sudden fright in his own optics was impossible to miss

"No one is sure yet exactly..." the youngling said, his voice quiet as usual. "A bot in shuttle mode... some old Decepticon... they... they think he dropped explosives on the... racetrack. The junior league was racing on the track..."

"Younglings..." Firestorm mumbled in disbelief, as her processor too slowly registered exactly what it was that Blast had said. And for the moment the dread and panic was enough to make her forget all about her own pain.

"Were any of them hurt?" she questioned. But she stopped speaking just a second later, and shook her head in horrified dismay.

Of course some would be hurt, she understood, spark-broken. Not to mention all those many bots that sat in the stands, besides, and had been simply watching the race. Still, her spark dropped, regardless, when Blastwave nodded slowly.

"Knockout and Arcee's own youngling was among the worst of them..."

"Cybershock..." Firestorm mumbled, her spark pounding harder. She loved that little bot, and knew full well that most anyone who'd met her felt the very same.

"I... I don't know very much," Blast' said, so obviously shaken himself as he explained. "I... I was in the stands... no one near where I sat was injured. But... she was laying on the track for quite a while... there was energon everywhere. Then she was taken away to the hospital..."

The youngling paused then, watching in silence, as Firestorm sat through another sharp and tearing pain. She tried her best not to make a sound, not to move or even let her face-plate show a thing to the youngling bot. But she knew from his look, that he'd seen a hint of something anyway.

"Firestorm...?"

"I'm... good, Blast. I'm good."

"No," the youngling said, so calm for such a young bot. He looked at her with his face-plate serious "You're not."

Firestorm watched - strongly resisting the urge to groan loudly with the next pain that spread through her body – as the youngling bot crossed the room quickly, pulled the curtains partway open, and stood a second looking out the window.

"My carrier is somewhere downstairs," he explained, clearly hoping to catch sight of said bot far below them on the walkway. "Some neighbor of yours was outside confused by the chaos... she stopped to help him..." He turned back to Firestorm, who forced a smile of assurance at him, before shifting positions awkwardly in her chair, searching without any success, for a far more comfortable position.

"Blast'," Firestorm said, gasping a little in her still growing pain. She gestured, somewhat vaguely toward her energon container, left now just out of reach on the table beside her.

"Do you... need more?" Blast' asked, when Firestorm quickly finished the container, between bursts of pain. She slowly shook her head.

"Is... your newspark on its way?" the youngling bot asked next. And Firestorm nodded just a little, reminding herself firmly that Soundwave's youngling brother was far from clueless.

"My carrier is on her way up," he reminded her, calm and collected as few grown bots might have been then. And he smiled for a second turning back for a fast glance at the window. "She'll know how to get a hold of help..."

At that very moment, and just as if on cue, another loud bang sounded at the door before it slid open, accessed by the door code.

"Firestorm?" Shortwave's voice called out, urgent and so obviously shaken. "Blastwave?"

"Carrier!" Blast' yelled without moving from his place sitting close to Firestorm's chair. "Firestorm is in trouble!"

Shortwave had Firestorm supported leaning forward in her arms and against her body panels, just as soon as she'd managed to hurry inside and park Lightwave – strapped into her chair – out of the way, in a corner of the room.

"The city was attacked this evening," she said. And her voice was shaky and disbelieving, despite her

obvious try at sounded calm as ever. "The bot that did it is a flier... and Soundwave gave chase, right off the planet. He'll get him. I know he will... he'll shoot him dead in space if that's what it takes..."

"But... I need him here..." Firestorm said, nearly crying in that second. And she was gripped at once by a terrible fear that Soundwave could never hope to out-fly a bot shuttle mode.

She opened her mouth again, to voice that dreadful thought. But a new wave of pain, worse than any before, rose up from the bottom of her mid section, up through her spark chamber, and clear around to the back of her body. She was dismayed and confused, barely understanding at all, when Shortwave calmly suggested she try moving from her chair to kneel instead on the floor in front of it. But she let the older bot help her to do so, without resistance anyway. And she was surprised and instantly relieved when the new position, strangely did seem at least a little bit helpful.

"I've asked Blast' to comm the hospital," Shortwave said. And Firestorm listened to her with growing relief, between bursts of pain.

"This is... getting worse.." Firestorm groaned. She wanted to move, to look up at Shortwave while she spoke to her. But a burst of pain worse than any before made her sit frozen where she was. And for a second she just gasped horribly, struggling for an intake.

"You be okay," Shortwave said. She sat beside her on the floor, smiling a moment in confidant assurance, as her optics moved to her own smallest youngling, who Blast had, at some point moved to lay on the floor close by unnoticed. "It's always so completely worth it in the end."

"Soundwave might not make it back in time..." Firestorm said, gasping again as another wave of pain tore through her frame. She felt her tears forming in her optics. And in another second, a few had escaped to flow down her face-plate. "He... he's just as excited about this youngling as I am now. And now he... he might not even get to be here to meet him,when he's born..."

"Soundwave will do his very best," Shortwave answered. She pulled the mini-bot against her frame so that she could hug her for a moment.

"Shortwave..." Firestorm mumbled, trembling hard as the next pain spread though her body. And for a long second the room around her appeared to spin. She steadied herself again as the pain faded. And for a second, she just sat, crying. "I'm... not sure I can do this. It's so bad already... and I know I'm not even close..."

"You'll be..." Shortwave began to assure her calmly, clearly about to tell her she'd be fine. But she stopped speaking at once, when Firestorm violently purged the contents of her fuel tank onto herself and the floor without any warning at all.

"I'm sorry," the mini-bot said, her embarrassment only causing her to cry harder.

"You're okay, sweetspark," Shortwave answered at once. And Firestorm, still crying hard and shaking as she felt the next wave of pain welling up inside her frame, barely managed to nod a little, as the older bot gently cleaned her up with a cleaning rag that Blast' must have brought her. "These things happen."

"I...," Firestorm mumbled, while her head drooped to rest against the front of the chair "I... guess he didn't want his additives..." she managed to laugh just a little between burst of pain, and beside her, Shortwave chuckled too.

Lifting her head again, feeling just a bit better, at least for that moment, Firestorm looked around a little. She saw Blast' nearby, sitting on the sofa and busy on a commlink, with a look of urgency on his still calm face-plate. And her optics slowly traveled again to the countdown screen on the wall.

"It's only too soon by just a couple of days," Shortwave said, clearly understanding exactly what Firestorm was thinking of again while she stared with dread at the lighted screen. "That's hardly something a newspark can't survive and be fine in the end."

"Can you sense his energy field?" she asked just a second later, resting a hand lightly on the younger bot's shoulder panel, and smiling a little.

Firestorm nodded slowly, because indeed she could. And though she had on a level that was apparently unheard of, since nearly the start of her carrying, it suddenly felt stronger now than ever. Slowly she smiled. And even as the next pain come, this one rising up through the bottom of her middle and spreading to her spark, where it lingered for a long moment, she almost managed to hold her smile.

"He... he's strong... curious... ready..." she said, her excitement winning out now as the pain faded again.

"Your youngling..." Shortwave mused, her tone still assuring as she shifted light's limbs around gently on the floor beside her – her motion almost idle, and her attention so clearly torn between bots now in her care. "He will be amazing."

"I can't wait to meet him either," Blast' said smiling. And on the floor, Light' gave a small and quiet little buzz – she first sound she'd made since the family had come.

"I think Lightwave knows something is important," Blastwave continued. And Firestorm, nodding as she smiled between pains, reached out to hold Light's little hand gently in hers.

"Newspark, Light," she said to the damaged youngling bot.

She gestured toward her spark chamber, not caring that the gesture was, in her case not entirely accurate. And thinking for a second more, she made a slow gesture of rocking her free arm, folded against her chest, from side to side. Lightwave buzzed again.

Firestorm might have grinned over that. And the others surely would have to. But the next pain came then, and she lowered her head to rest on the chair, fighting back a scream for a good moment before it finally escaped anyway, muffled by the overstuffed chair pad. She became well aware of wetness under her lower body crumpled on the floor. And looking down as the pain began to fade, as gasped in horror at the dark oil streaked energon spreading in a fast growing pool under where she sat.

"Oh no..." she groaned, her spark dropping hard. And for a long moment she just sat frozen, staring with fast growing terror at the still spreading energon pool.

"You're okay," Shortwave said, a hand on the younger bot's shoulder panel, and slightly less calm showing in her optics now. Firestorm heard her mumble quickly to her youngling to try again to reach the medbay. And she mumbled something about how it was truly urgent now.

"I... I'm... on it..." Blast' said, his voice clearly panicked. And Firestorm barely managed a nod of thanks before purging her fuel tank again. She purged again with barely a pause and more energon covered the below her.

"The... newspark..." Firestorm mumbled. So much of her will and awareness was focused on on her still unborn youngling that it barely occurred to her at all to even worry that she too might just have been in any real danger then. "He... he's gotta be... okay..."

"It's alright, sweetspark," Shortwave said, her voice barely registering through Firestorm's now near completely panic. She pulled the younger, smaller bot's frame back a bit to rest against her down while she kneeled on the floor, arms tight around her and so clearly trying hard just to keep her calmer.

"Tune yourself back in to his presence," she suggested, her voice slow and quiet. "Can you sense his energy again?"

"I... I can..." Firestorm nodded, smiling weakly with her relief for just a fraction of a second before the worst pain she'd even felt by far seemed to threaten to tear her clear in half from the inside out.

She screamed loudly then, perhaps enough to alarm those on an entire floor of the building. And before she could stop herself she'd uttered far from acceptable for the younglings in hearing range. The room appeared to spin and for a second she heard another loud horrible scream before even understanding that it was her own.

"I... wasn't able to reach Soundwave's comm line," Blastwave said, clearly regretful for a moment and forcing Firestorm's awareness back into the present again, before his optics showed hope again, and he added quickly. "I'll... try to reach the police department. But... I've finally reached a medi-bot. He promised he'd send urgent help."

########

 _'Soundwave_ ,' said Ultra Magnus urgently via their comms. _'Report status!'_

Soundwave looked around him as he flew in vehicle mode... the vast expanse of space all around him, and Cybertron below. He might have taken a moment to admire the view if he only had a moment he could spare.

 _'Target – sighted_ ,' he reported quickly, turning himself a little before firing his engines upon seeing the purple form of the shuttle retreating to his left hand side.

 _'I don't think I need to tell you twice that what you did was foolish, taking off after Astratrain_ _all on your own,'_ Ultra Magnus warned, his tone not quite a reprehend, but still not exactly pleased.

Soundwave's primary drive had always been his need to be nearly unquestioningly loyal to someone. And even then, it bothered him that the police captain – the bot who'd quickly come to hold his greatest loyalty since his defection to the Autobots, was anything less then impressed with his actions on duty. But he pushed that aside, somewhat forcefully, reminding himself far more mattered now than programming born of simple survival. His determination drove him froward now. And he furiously fired his engines again.

' _Someone has got to stop him, sir,'_ he comm'd, just as quickly as before. He flipped himself over in space, trying for more power and speed. And for a second his own strange confidence, impressed him. ' _Astrotrain has wings. You need a flier to even have a chance at taking this one in.'_

 _'Just... be careful, Soundwave.'_ The voice of the police captain was confident now, understanding and... concerned. _'If you can't engage him safely then... don't do so at all We'll find another way. I'm not losing a good bot tonight. You've got a youngling on the way. That kid needs a living creator.'_

 _'I...,'_ Soundwave paused in mid reply, still startled and disbelieving even after years, at someone calling him 'good.' He thought of Firestorm and their expected newspark – the little family he'd come to want more then he wanted anything. And inside his flying alt mode, he smiled to himself _'I'll... be careful, Ultra Magnus, sir.'_

He might have said just a little more. But he'd gained on his target with surprising quickness. And Astrotrain's reaction – laughter – at seeing him come closer, held his focus entirely.

"Soundwave," the larger bot called out. And his voice was nearly... cheerful. "I'm surprised to see you here, though certainly not entirely displeased. Leadership positions under my new rule, will of course be carefully considered. But you could easily make the short list..." Astrotrain paused then, turning to face his fellow flying Cybertronian. And have gave another good natured laugh. "Come to apply for your old job back, then?"

Something was off somehow. Astrotrain's tone, and the hint of laughter that came right along with it was insincere, mildly mocking somehow. Soundwave noted that in silence, filing the detail away inside his processor without the slightest hint of a reaction at all.

"Astrotrain!" he said, his tone firm and serious. And in spite of himself, he enjoyed the hint of a gasp from the bigger bot, at hearing him speak for the first time ever. "Stop this. It's over... Cybertron is a new world now."

"I always knew you could talk, Soundwave... even if you never said a word."

"I'm taking you in, Astrotrain," Soundwave answered. And though he had his doubts about successfully doing so, he refused to let his voice show it. "You've committed an act of terrorism in dropping explosives on a public racetrack. And on behalf of the patrol, I'm placing you under immediate arrest."

"You're a police-bot now?" Astrotrain questioned. But his tone was not as close to full shocked as Soundwave new it could well have been. And not a second later he just laughed again.

"It doesn't suit you, Soundwave," he said, far more openly mocking now. "You were once among the greatest of Decepticons. And you always were so proud of your place within the cause You fought for the greater good of Cybertron, right beside me. Now... you presume to arrest me for fighting for that very same good?"

"Fighting for good?" Soundwave exclaimed. His anger suddenly threatened to overtake him, as he powered up his weapons. And the next words he spoke, were shouted. "By bombing a public racetrack? One filled with youngling bots – the future of our world? Youngling bots having a wonderful time racing for the championship title, while carriers and creators sat watching? One small bot nearly lost her life! And you still see only greater good?"

"Surely the life of one youngling is a price worth paying for our freedom," Astrotrain reasoned. And Soundwave felt only fury.

His mind traveled quickly back to the night of his own Autobot initiation party, years before already, but never close to forgotten. And he remembered that Cybershock - a tiny child barely into her second frame years then – had climbed into his lap like it was the most acceptable thing in the world to do. Her face-plate flashed through his processor, and he remembered her tiny giggles as she'd snuggled on his knees... he remembered Knockout's shocked dismay, and Firestorm's grin.

"You... sparkless idiot," Soundwave shouted, well aware of just how unlike him it was to say such things to anyone. He flung a cable free from its place inside his own frame, sent electrical current through it, and easily imagined he might just fry his opponent's processor to little more than sparking wires, if he could just grab hold of him. He so clearly recalled the slight weight of the little bot's tiny frame as she rested, calmly as anything, ginning her innocence as she offered him sticky energon treats. "That youngling was the first Cybertronian child to see me as someone capable of decency. She was born in peacetime, born to be safe, and to be loved... just like at least a hundred others. This is not their war!"

"You sound just like an... Autobot," Astrotrain ranted. And Soundwave knew he was more then likely snarling his disgust somewhere inside his shuttle form. But he didn't care.

"I am an Autobot," Soundwave said, remembering how he'd wondered once just how one could ever possibly be proud to say exactly that. He turned himself a little bit in space, even daring to drift closer to his once ally now turned enemy.

"So my informant on Cybertron told me." And Soundwave easily pictured a sick and overly triumphant grin no one would ever see hidden inside the large bot's alt mode. "I had thought he might just have been confused... or lying."

"Informant?" Soundwave demanded at once, interested, alarmed, and dangerously close to becoming truly angry. He launched the cable again, and this time it landed easily, grasping firmly to the underside of his opponent's shuttle mode. "Who is this informant?"

"You betrayed the Decepticon cause, Soundwave," Astrotrain growled, struggling unsuccessfully to free himself by flying to the left and the right and yanking hard against the cable, and ignoring the direct question entirely. He powered up his weapon, fired behind him and missed Soundwave by a mile. "You've betrayed Lord Megatron."

"He betrayed all of Cybertron," Soundwave answered back, yanking his opponent toward him slowly with the cable, and with near amusement at the terrible aim. "We all trusted him... the civilians... the down and outs... he gave us all hope of a better way only to have enslaved the entire world if he'd won the war. And... in the end he wanted the Earth besides..."

"He always did take what he wanted," Astrotrain snarled. "He was strong enough to take anything and make it his. No one dared oppose him. They feared his name. Those are things to be admired. Things I will soon be admired and feared for the very same way."

"Be quiet," Soundwave demanded. His tone was sharp and just as commanding as he could possibly have managed to make it. And he pulled with great effort against the weight of his opponent, who fought to pull both of them backwards. "You'll have your chance to speak for yourself. Even a mindless terrorist gets that much now."

His last comment was just a little out of line and he knew it. And it hardly mattered in the least if the pointed accusation was entirely true. With his still building rage barely contained within his frame, he wrapped his cables tighter, pulled harder against the struggling of the captive shuttle mode.

"You'll regret this, Soundwave," Astrotrain ranted loudly. "You and every single one of your new Autobot friends. You'll never hold me in a cell. I'll never go to trail. I'll kill each and every one of your so called friends just as soon as I've finished killing you. You're ridiculous. You're pathetic. And you're weak..."

 _A groundbridge!_ The thought flashed through Soundwave's processor at once, as his opponent's struggling grew truly violent And with a hint of a smirk across his face-plate, he plotted co-ordinates in under a second, well prepared to launch a bridge right into lock up cell five, before quickly shoving Astrotrain through it. A bridge popped up, swirling in space in front of them, and Soundwave vented his instant relief at her perfect success, even as Astrotrain quite predictably, began to scream louder, firing his engines harder and shooting bolts from his blasters in his fury.

"Soundwave!" Astrotrain screamed in predictable threat the second he was captured. "Let go of me you... pit slagged traitor!"

"I'm taking you in," Soundwave repeated. And all the while he pretended his former faction-mate's words didn't bother him a little.

"Let go of me! You're pathetic. You were always pathetic. Nothing more then Megatron's well trained pet. Like the loyalist of Cyberhounds."

But Astrotrain's struggling slowed then, and abruptly he came close to stopping it entirely. In that second, Soundwave saw hope – a feeling he was finally becoming used to.

"Astrotrain, please... stop this," he said, nearly begging, because suddenly it mattered. "Give up now and agree to land peacefully. Let me... show you New Cybertron... the world we all built together. The place is full of refugees and younglings now... and they all just want to live happily in safety."

"Your New Cybertron will never last," Astrotrain just snarled in reply. And again he laughed in mockery, even as he was yanked toward the groundbridge by Soundwave's cable. "Bot were created only to endlessly fight. We are a world of warriors. That''s all we ever were. That's all we'll ever be, no matter how much you might dream of being more."

He fired his engines again suddenly, but this time he did so to move himself closer to Soundwave instead of struggling again to get away. He transformed to bot mode, floating easily in space. And Soundwave, who had been about to argue that his once faction-mate had gotten everything wrong, found himself held suddenly in a firm and dangerous hold by his own captive.

"I think I might just let you live for a while, Soundwave," Astrotrain said, his voice now a menacing whisper close to Soundwave's audial receptor. "Long enough to let you see me kill your prefect little Firestorm... and that tiny youngling on the way right along with her!"

"No!" Soundwave yelled in something that was almost a scream in reply. He transformed to his own bot mode, and instantly he was struggling hard, hampered only slightly by any lack of gravity in his desperate tries at subduing his opponent. "You'll never get to Firestorm. You won't get anywhere near her. If you ever even look at her I'll kill you. I'll rip your spark out!"

"We all us to doubt back on the warship that you would ever feel anything at all," Astrotrain taunted. "Let alone love." He laughed again, as he was punched hard in his face-plate and kicked in the chest panel twice in succession. "Who would have guessed the one that would show you you still had a living spark, would be some filthy, rust-ridden refugee."

"Don't you ever insult her again," Soundwave growled, sure his own tone would have scared any sane bot senseless. And with every bit of force and will he had, he managed in one fast sudden move to hurl the larger bot through the groundbridge.

 _'Ultra Magnus,'_ Soundwave said over his commlink, while he forced back his still intense. _'I've got him. 'You will want to check the holding cells.'_

 _'A good use of your old relocation trick, I see,'_ the police captain said back, chuckling just a little in his understanding. But his voice turned completely serious just a second later, ass he continued on speaking. _'I need you back on the surface, and it needs to be now. Fly straight to the base hospital.'_

 _'Sir?'_ Soundwave questioned, already back into hiss alt mode, already flying fast, debating a bridge for himself, and daring to speak slightly out of turn. Panic rose fast through his frame.

' _It's Firestorm'_ Ultra Magnussaid, confirming his fears. But his tone quickly softened a little in another instant, and again he chuckled over the comm. _'Half the city is trying to reach you by now. You're about to be a creator!'_

 _########_

The medical student that had come to met him at the front door of the hospital, was nervous. Soundwave saw the young bots unease all too clearly in her uneven steps, and fast darting optics that looked around idly at anything but him.

"Firestorm's situation is... uh..." The student paused, clearly uncertain of exactly how to best continue. And in her nervousness, she nearly tripped over her own feet as they rounded a bend in the hallway.

"It's..." she tried again. And this time her words come out far better. "It's far from ideal. Nothing at all is going to go according to plan. She's losing energon. The youngling is stuck, apparently wedged into the worst position possible. And Ratchet has said more then once that she's clearly in the worst pain he's ever seen from a bot in spark separation... He told me to hurry when he sent me to meet you. It... it looks like he might power her down for interventions. And... she should see you first..."

If Soundwave had ever doubted from the student's first explanations that things were indeed serious, the mention of a power down would have convinced in a hurry. That, he knew, despite his lack of detailed knowledge of such things, was certainly not routine in the process of delivering a newspark. The thought of intervention to any degree made his spark drop with worry at once. And he hurried his steps toward the 'new carriers' room, in his rush to get there faster.

"Heeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeeee!" A voice screamed somewhere still a good ways down the hallway. And recognizing the screaming at once as that of Firestorm, Soundwave began to run forward. Beside him, he saw the young student cringe, clearly still unused to such noise.

"How long has Firestorm been here?" Soundwave asked, in mid step. And his spark dropped a little, as soon as he'd asked. Because he feared the answer.

"Hours," the student said, sadly. She glanced around nervously as ever for a moment more, before her optic's finally met his, pausing for just second in the hallway. And slowly she smiled, however uncertain and uneasy that smile might have been.

"You made it on time," she said, with a tone suddenly close to true confidence. "That's what matters most."

They reached the closed door of the 'new carriers' room. And the young bot gestured urgently for him to hurry inside. Though she made no move to follow herself, and instead just looked uneasy all over again. Soundwave reached fast, to tap the door control, allowing it to slide open. But he paused for a moment in the middle of his motion, spark dropping faster than ever, when he realized with a horrible start that the screaming from behind the door had stopped entirely.

"Hurry," the student said And clearly without thinking, she reached out with a hand extended, obviously about to shove him lightly toward the door, before she stopped herself and pulled her hand back with a visible start. Quickly she tapped the door control herself.

"Soundwave," Ratchet snapped with a sigh of audible relief, when Soundwave stepped into the room hurriedly. He stood with his back to him, working with a med scanner, and he didn't look up. "Over here. Now!"

"Sound...wave..." Firestorm mumbled, her voice shaking, as she lay still on the recharge station close to the middle of the room. Her frame was shaking as much as her voice was. And her half closed optics were dimming. She reached up slowly with a shaking right hand. And Soundwave took at once, forcing a smile, as she mumbled up at him. "I... thought you'd never... make it..."

"And I was just as worried," Shortwave said. She looked up from her place, sitting in a metal folding chair on Firestorm's other side, and shook her head with obvious concern on her face-plate. She lowered her tone then, and went on explaining, even when it became obvious that Firestorm was not exactly listening intently in the first place. "Things have not exactly been going well."

"Firestorm," Soundwave said slowly. He held tighter to the little mini-bot's small hand, and looked intently at her optics, trying his hardest to make her focus on him She did for only a second before her optics dimmed again and all focus was clearly lost entirely.

"She's not very with it right now, I'm afraid," Ratchet said. And Soundwave – though he was certainly nothing close to a jumpy bot in general – nearly jumped off the floor, startled when the old bot placed a hand lightly on his shoulder panel.

"She's had a lot of pain medication... it's working finally. And she's lost a lot of energon besides..." the old medi-bot sighed and gave a sad little shake of his head.

She clearly had lost a lot. And letting his optics travel to her lower body and the floor below her, his spark dropped still further at the amount of blue glowing liquid that had run everywhere, so obviously streaked with dirty blackened oil. His thoughts went at once to the attack of the past night. And he guessed in once sad instant that the hospital's store of donated energon, jut had to have been all but drained because of it.

"We can give her some of mine," Soundwave said at once Because in his spark it was never a question, but a simple given.

"I suspected you'd so easily volunteer," Ratchet answered just as quickly. "Your offer will be more then accepted when this is finally done with.

"I... feel next... one..." Firestorm mumbled, optics still half closed, and half way into recharge And Soundwave blinked at her a second, confused.

He looked though at the monitor running silently behind her, because Ratchet and Shortwave wee suddenly watching it so intently. And then he understood. An energy pulse – it showed, slowly building, on the monitor behind them. Firestorm's optics brightened then in an alarming flash of fear. And her frame stiffened in obvious dread. Soundwave heard his carrier speak then however. And her tone was surprisingly almost positive. Because, as she quickly explained in hushed tones, it had been too long since the last one, and they should have been closer together instead of much further apart.

"Firestorm," Ratchet said speaking quickly. He spoke louder too, clearly so determined to be heard by a bot still half way to losing consciousness. And Soundwave saw him shake the mini-bot gently, a hand against her shoulder panel, and a faint hint of hope in his optics. "Ready to give this one more try?"

"Umm...hmm..." Firestorm mumbled. And a strange determination filled her blue optics, as she struggled to move a little.

"She's been so beyond determined to make this work without any huge intervention," Shortwave explained. Soundwave saw her shake her when he glanced her way for just a second, before looking right back at Firestorm again. "There's been no real progress. The youngling just isn't moving. And... you see how weak she is now." She gave a look of something that might have been concern mixed with admiration. "Still, she begged Ratchet to let her try for just a little longer."

"And that was a very good try," Soundwave said to Firestorm,, his optics meeting hers again after several long and helpless moments during which she'd cried and fought, pushing as hard as she clearly could all to no avail, until finally she fell back again, her head rocking with little control on the pillow behind her, groaning with the pain of her useless efforts.

"I'm... sorry..." she mumbled, tears on her face-plate now. "I can't..."

"You did the best you could," Soundwave answered quietly. He grabbed her hand again and held it, smiling his assurance he best he knew how to Her last good try had truly been her last.. And he knew that without asking.

"How is... how is the newspark?" he questioned instead, fearing the answer more then he thought he'd ever feared anything.

"The newspark is still doing amazingly well," Ratchet answered. And that suddenly seemed to well explain his willingness to give it the wait that Firestorm had begged for. He pointed toward the monitor, his finger indicating a small red flashing light near the top, pulsing in steady time to a steady spark pulse. The old medic chuckled then just a little, an action clearly intended to reassure both the new creator and carrier. "The little thing is stuck pretty good. But it doesn't seem the least bit fussed about the situation."

"Ratchet... says he's still perfect," Firestorm mumbled. And she managed a hint of a smile as she held Soundwave's hand. "He'll be okay... even though he's early."

"It's Firestorm I'm most worried about now," Ratchet said, his voice quiet. His optics went back too the white and yellow mini-bot, and he talked to her again, just a little louder. "I'm going to get you ready for a good power down now, okay? Then I can set to work dissembling your front panels, and safely grab the little one that way."

"This... wasn't the plan," Firestorm mumbled in the tone of a bot so clearly defeated. She shook her head weakly. And for a moment, she just lay still and crying. Fear flashed across her optics again, and her shaking, which had improved only slightly, grew so rapidly worse than ever.

"Everything will be okay," Soundwave said, his optics leaving hers only long enough to glance back at the monitor again.

It didn't take a bot with any level of medical training to understand at least the basics of energon pressure. And he could see from the readings that hers was falling fast. He was sure more energon had covered the floor by now. And the bleeding – which though obviously bad, had been under some control – was no longer controlled anymore. Ratchet was hurrying now, rushing from one side of the room to the other, speaking in whispers over his comm-link, and almost throwing tools onto a rolling cart, all without showing the panic it was so easy to guess he must easily have felt.

"Ratchet," Firestorm said then, grabbing for the old medi-bot's arm before Soundwave could gently stop her from dong so. Her optics opened wider again for a second. And she looked at him begging, even as she fought back another scream with hard gasping intakes. "Pl... please... Can't I at... at least st...stay awake?" The medic appeared to consider for a second, while gently pulling his hand away from hers in order to hurriedly hook her up to spark monitoring – a clear precaution, Soundwave was strangely glad to see in use.

"It is possible," Ratchet muttered, confidant even in his obvious uncertainty. He paused in his hurrying And for a moment he looked at her seriously, while he spoke. "I could override the sensory connections for most of your body. You would remain conscious. You could talk, and see, and understand everything. But you wouldn't feel anything." He shook his head then however, so clearly doubtful as he muttered. "It would be... far more frightening for you that way."

"I can do it," Firestorm mumbled. She lay still for a long moment, intaking a little fast with tears escaping down her face-plate, before she groaned with pain again, blinked and looked up, shakily. "I... I can do it."

"Firestorm... you are sure about this?" Soundwave exchanged looks with Ratchet, as he questioned. Both knew full well just how easily Firestorm tended to panic, during treatment in more than one medical situation over the time both had known her. But she only nodded, determined as ever and letting it show at her tear-streaked face-plate.

"Okay," Ratchet said, his tone indicating that he'd clearly decided. "We're going to give this a try. But..." he rested a hand gently on the mini-bot's shoulder panel for just a second before he reached over to yank the supply cart closer to him. "I need you to stay calm, and listen to me if I'm talking to you"

Firestorm once again just nodded silently, whimpering weakly with pain, as she took a gasping intake.

"This is Downshift," Ratchet explained as the room's door slid open, and a young bot stepped inside slowly. He waved toward the young bot once. And Soundwave instantly recognized the nervous young student that had met him in the entrance way. She looked as nervous as ever, her silver face-plate showing her doubt, as she stood with a med kit held too tightly in her hands. "She will serve as an assistant."

Soundwave - faced now with silence and something close to calm, as the medics worked with their quick efficiency – finally found himself with time to truly think. And for the first time in his life, he found instantly that he didn't much like being left with his thoughts. He feared for the newspark, now that he had time to do so. And it didn't matter anymore that he'd been more then assured the little one was still remarkably quite perfectly okay. Even the pulsing light, still blinking on the monitor in time to the beat of a tiny youngling spark, was not quite enough to make him certain.

Then there was Firestorm. His beloved, precious little mini-bot - who was now finally his bondmate for life. She was still losing energon. And it was clear that it was more so now then ever, from the look of the once white floor. He found himself hoping that just as much of his as he could give her would be enough to make a difference. And the unspoken understanding that most any bot on base would happily give theirs too if it was required, because she'd come to mean the world to them all, did only very little to boost his confidence in the situation now.

He knew his worries, to the degree he was worrying, were more then likely unfounded. And his logical mind shouted this fact loudly in his awareness. But the anxious part yelled louder. And he couldn't manage to ignore it no matter how he tried.

"S... Soundwave..." Firestorm mumbled. And her voice cut through every one of his racing thoughts at once. His little mate's voice sounded positively terrified.

"I... I..." she held his hand tighter. And he realized only then that she'd never let go of it even when he sadly failed to notice in the distraction of his thoughts Her optics were wide open and darting around the room quickly enough that she could not have really seen anything they landed on. "I'm... panicking..."

"Please don't panic," Soundwave answered, speaking slowly and doing his best while he remembered that both he and Ratchet had feared exactly that. His free hand – the one she wasn't gripping onto for dear life by now – rested on one of her shiny white wings. And though she had not been born a flier, his gentle touch against it did seem to calm her a fair bit.

"My lovely, wonderful Firestorm," he said, just as slowly as before. And he smiled brightly at her, when her optics locked again on his. "It's been too long since I've told you how happy you've made me. Still I mean it now just as much as ever."

"You're very welcome," Firestorm retorted after a few seconds' silence. And she managed a smile, a real one... so much like her playful, ever joking self then. Her smile didn't last long though, fading again only seconds later, as hr optics drifted around settling on parts of her own white and yellow armor, left on a spare work table close by, neatly stacked for reatchement.

"You're okay, you're okay," Shortwave said slowly.

She hadn't said a thing in what felt like a very long time – simply sitting silent instead mostly out of way in her folding chair now at the head of the recharge station. And Soundwave despite his grateful understand that she was simply letting him and his mate have their moments, felt ridiculous at having forgotten all about her entirely. He glanced for a second at his carrier, relieved when she smiled assurance at him, and realizing only then that he was trembling with his own unease and emotion. And he promptly turned his full focus back to his little mate again.

"Our youngling will be here any moment now," he said, smiling brightly still concerned as ever, but expectant and curious all in the very same second. And finally he allowed the still steady spark pulse of a youngling, showing on the monitor, to assure him the child was still very much okay.

"Our very own baby," Firestorm answered, mumbling again so clearly still so clearly exhausted and now fighting off recharge. She looked just as though she was going to say more. Soundwave imagined she might just have chattered on guessing at paint colors and frame details, had she not been so very uneasy... had she not been weak from her energon loss. Instead she just lay silent for one long moment and then for another, until she said, mumbling, "I'm... glad you decided you wanted him too."

"I really, truly do," Soundwave said, assuring her even when he no longer sensed a need to remind her of his true change of spark. And he pondered now, just as much as he knew she silently wondered, just who their youngling bot would become.

"And... I've got it," Ratchet exclaimed suddenly. And his voice, triumphant proud and urgent all at once, got Soundwave's attention at once. It had Firestorm's too. That was plainly obvious by the smiled on her face-plate, as she looked around her, wide-optic's with her exception.

"You are a big one," Dwnshift, the assisting medical student muttered, so clearly speaking to newly born bot. And Soundwave watched, amazed, anxious and rapidly close to fearing he might fall over,, to see two tiny dark blue metal feet kicking within sight, while the tiny bot was held by Ratchet, standing with his back to the room.

"He's okay!" the old medi-bot said, obvious having checked him over,, working a work station against the far wall. And it was then that the tiny gave its first tiny buzzing squeal of a cry. "He\s t a bit of oil in his intakes, but he should easily expel that on his own."

"He?" Firestorm mumbled. And she grinned in spite of her exhaustion at the nod from the medi-bot. Beside her, her small hand still in his, Soundwave smiled too.

Ratchet turned around again quickly. And Soundwave, instantly protective in some way he'd never been before, watched with uneasy urgent anxiety, as the old bot handed the tiny thing in his arms off to the medical student, with a hurried order of, "hand him to his carrier. Then we can get to work reassembling her."

"Soundwave," Firestorm mumbled, her optics and entire focus on the newborn, that the young student on promptly placed laying over her chest panel. She appeared not to care in least about the medics working quickly to piece together anything they'd taken apart, barely seemed to hear the whirring of medical power tools and clanging, clanking metal. Tears formed in her optics. But it was plainly obvious they were happy tears now. "Look what... we made. He's... amazing. He's so cute."

"He's beautiful," Shortwave said, still sitting nearby and mostly entirely.

But Soundwave only stood and stared, his optics on the youngling, as he wiggled a little in his carrier's arms, so clearly trying hard just to get himself used to moving. He watched his tiny bot pull in a slow intake, clearly still unsure exactly how to intake exactly but giving it his very best try. And he used the air to make content little noises, snuggling in against Firestorm's panels. But Soundwave didn't speak. He couldn't seem to find the words to say a thing.

"Soundwave," Shortwave said beside him. She chuckled a little, but her voice was entirely seriousness too. "You'd best hold him for a while."

Soundwave was about to turn to her, to tell her her would just as soon as Firestorm became ready to let him. But he looked instead at his little mate. And instantly he understood his carrier urgency Firestorm, in her exhaustion and the loss of vital fluids, had drifted into recharge clearly unable to help it, with the newborn still laying on her happily.

"Alright my... son." The word felt so strange in Soundwave's processor as he said it out loud. But so amazing and right at the very same time. He scooped the tiny bot up into hiss arms so carefully, fearing all the while he would do everything wrong, while trusting at the same time that he wouldn't – assuring himself with one intent look at her that his mate was really only sleeping. "Your creator's got you."

########

For most of the night, Arcee had recharged – or tried to, however restlessly it might have been – in a padded chair close to her small daughter's recharge station in her room on the youngling ward. And during the far too many times she was wide awake instead, she wandered to the window across the small room, to stare outside at nothing, through the darkness of a Cybertronian night. And waking up again now, from perhaps her seventh short rest that night, she sure enough wandered again immediately to the same little window, instantly relieved somehow to see the first hints of daylight.

The long endless night had been easier when her mate was close by – though he didn't seem to have recharged much at all in the chair near hers. She'd seen him more then once reading over datapads of notes... or at least staring idly at said pads while they sat open on his knees. But he had his own work to do too – patients elsewhere to keep his optics on every now and then. And Arcee had been alone since he'd left to check up on each one of them.

Forty-one bots had been damaged in the past evening's attack. And her spark dropped at the thought of each one of them. But only seven had been bad enough to be admitted to the hospital. And she was thankful for that, well aware of how it could so easily have been so much worse than it was.

Cybershock had thankfully slept the whole night – her forced power down slowly drifting into a pain medication induced recharge from which both Ratchet and Knockout had been quick to insist with confidence that she would wake from just fine. And Arcee turned slowly away from the window again, to stand still and looking down at her in the dim light of early morning.

The little bot's amour was dented and scuffed, and so many of the scratches that covered her paint were clearly more then just cosmetic. The front of her body was patched up well enough, pieced together and carefully welded after it had been half way to dismantled entirely for urgent repairs. And it now stayed protected under some kind of semi-transparent plastic covering tapped in place at the edges off her undamaged metal. Her arm was wrapped up tightly too, left resting over her chest panel. Arcee knew full well, much to her dread that it had been close to shattered, left in several badly broken pieces.

"Ma...mama?" the youngling's voice muttered, questioning suddenly with her optics still closed, and so clearly confused. Arcee stepped closer to the recharge station at once and just in time to see a pair of small blue optics finally start to light again.

"Hey, baby," she said, smiling just a little in assurance. The hand attached to the little bot's unbroken arm reached out slowly, so clearly searching in her sleepy confusion for a hand to hold onto. And Arcee gently took it at once, the smile still on her face-plate. "I'm right here. You're okay."

"Mama... I... I'm..." the youngling said, whimpering through every mumbled word. And she never came close to finishing what what she clearly wanted to say before simply bursting out into horrible sobbing cries instead.

"You're okay, baby," Arcee said. She considered quickly, looking for a part of the little bot's frame that was safe to touch, before her free hand settled gently on the small shoulder panel.

Cybershock was in terrible pain. That was plainly obvious at once. And the usually articulate youngling could barely manage to speak coherently, in her terrible distress. Arcee barely considered for a second, before she climbed carefully onto the recharge station, and even more carefully lay beside her little bot. For a short moment she held her attention on my her EM field, on letting it touch her child's much weaker field. And she smiled a little again when she felt her youngling move just a little, as much as she could clearly do, to snuggle in, against her frame.

"Do you see what Ratchet and your creator did to your arm?" she asked the little bot, truly looking at the wrappings that covered it for the first time - a mix of white and purple in a roughly striped pattern.

The medical team certainly did have various colors to use for such wrappings. And Arcee could so easily imagine the medics had taken a moment to consider what might just make the little bot smile as soon as she could do so again. Switchgear's wrappings years before had shifted through several bright colors over months.. And despite the seriousness of the present moment, Arcee smiled with amusement in recalling how being allowed to pick her own colors and often a few at a time, had been the thing that had once made the green youngling quietly accept her frequent changeovers

"I... like the colors..." Cybershock said slowly, and growing just a little calmer as her carrier's field wrapped tighter around her. Arcee just held her little hand for a moment and lay still, smiling assurance again.

"I thought you would," she said, laughing just a little. Her free hand rested again on the youngling's shoulder panel, and she rubbed it lightly, while the little bot held her other hand tighter and started to cry hard again.

"Firestorm had her youngling sometime in the night," Arcee said, still calm and quiet. And and she sighed with relief when Cybershock, quite predictably, smiled just a little through her tears of pain. "There were... unexpected complications. And no one's seen Firestorm or the newspark yet. But I did get a short message from Soundwave." Arcee chuckled then, with her small daughter still snuggled against her. "He was just as proud as any bot I know, to brag about his brand new son."

"A boy?" Cybershock mused. She still cried, and did so pretty hard. But she smiled too, sniffling, fighting back her tears, as her optics brightened. Her own guess had been that the little one would be a boy when she'd been asked to place one of her own as part of Soundwave's guessing poll. Arcee just nodded, smiling again as her little bot pressed herself in tighter against her, seeking comfort as she cried harder again, her pain so clearly worse by the minute instead of any better.

Arcee's comm beeped once, indicating an incoming file. And slowly, carefully, and bothering with it then only because she feared it could have been truly urgent, given the recent attack, she reached to retrieve her communication pad from her storage compartment. She smiled at once when she'd glanced at the file, because it wasn't terrible at all. In just a second more she nearly grinned at the timing.

"Soundwave just sent us a photo file," she said to her youngling, with a smile on her face-plate. "Would you like to see?" She was of course not at all surprised when her youngling, still trembling with her pain filled cries, nodded with just as just eagerness as her state would allow.

"He's... cute..." the youngling mumbled, with a slightly brighter smile as she gazed at the pad in her carrier's hand. But in just another second more, she was sobbing hard again, her small body shaking, and her face-plate clearly displaying every hint of her displeasure.

Cybershock struggled to move a little and then far more, clearly far from close to comfortable and only making everything worse the more she tried moving. Her crying grew louder, and optics clouded with coolant and hazy with pain, blinked helplessly. Arcee moved slowly, pulling her helpless sobbing shaking child against her frame, carefully as she could possibly be, not to harm her any worse. And when Cybershock buried her face-plate against her left side panel, she just lay holding her like that.

"You're okay," she told her, quiet and calm as she blinked hard to fight back her own tears. She checked her field again, letting it brush lightly over that of her youngling. And for a long moment she just stayed that way, unmoving. "You're okay, baby. I've got you. I've got you."

"Mama..." the youngling mumbled, and her voice was muffled now against Arcee's armor. She'd clearly been about to comment on her still increasing pain. But she said nothing more after all, and instead just went right on crying.

"How long has she been awake?" Knockout's voice, suddenly speaking close behind her, nearly caused Arcee to jump out of her body armor. And she blinked a little, sleepy and stressed and distracted, dismayed that she hadn't heard a single foot step as he'd crossed the room.

"Not long," she answered, her voice nearly whispering so as not to startle the youngling still sobbing helplessly against her frame. "A few minutes maybe..." she shook her head a little, and rubbed their child's little shoulder panel again, almost without a thought about it. "She tried to talk with me a little bit, but..." her words died out unfinished as her mate nodded his clearly sad understanding.

"I was afraid this would be pretty bad," he muttered in his own obvious despair. He stepped closer, and Arcee watched, still unmoving as he gently rested a hand on the front of the youngling's headpiece.

"Cybershock," he said slowly. And it was obvious that she hadn't noticed his presence at all until then. Because she jumped a little in startled panic. Still she just went on crying hard, her body shaking against her carrier's armor. "Think you can look at me for a second, my girl?"

"Daddy..." Cybershock mumbled. She turned her head a little, her face-plate soaked with coolant tears. And her wet optics tried to focus on his. "Ple... please... help me..."

"You're okay, you're okay," Knockout said, just as close to calmly as he could obviously manage to, and repeating his mate's earlier words of assurance. He injected pain medication into the youngling's energon line without her appearing to even notice, and stood shaking his head at his mate, indicating without a single word just how much he doubted it would do enough good.

 _'Please,'_ Arcee said to her mate, speaking to him silently through their spark connection, as she went on simply holding their youngling, who lay still snuggled in beside her. _'Don't ask me to let go of her...'_

 _'You knew exactly what she needed most of all,'_ Knockout answered back, assuring even in his silent voice. _'I wouldn't even try to make you move.'_

"I think..." he said, speaking to the youngling, as he did his best to calm her with a hint of an assuring smile, and his free hand still on her headpiece. "We might be best powering you down again for a while." He smiled again, and Arcee heard his intakes struggle as he fought back his despair. "Just for a while... just for the morning. Let your self repair systems work for awhile..."

Arcee knew exactly how much the little bot had always feared power downs. And she held her tighter again, just as much so as she could given her state, fully expecting horrified screams. She held their youngling's little hand tightly again, ready to assure her, to talk to her and calm her, and do just as much as she could. But Cybershock just nodded a little without any fuss and struggle at all. And she did so almost calmly, through a slow and gasping, pain filled intake.

"Oh... kay..." she managed through another short bout of pain induced sobbing cries. And a flash of anxious unease finally showed in her optics, but still she barely moved.

"You just hold onto Mama's hand and intake, my girl," Knockout said gently, while he worked to quickly input the little bot's power down sequence. "Everything will be much better when you wake up again."

"Arcee, you should rest for a while," He said slowly to his mate the second their youngling had drifted off into her forced recharge. He rested a hand on top of hers, and smiled with his usual assurance despite his own obvious trembling. He gestured toward the powered down youngling bot, and blinked with optics with emotion. "She'll sleep for most of the day now."

"I am resting," Arcee mumbled right back, still laying on their daughter's recharge station, her body still against her smaller one, a small hand held tightly in hers and in no great hurry to let her go even as the little bot recharged, unaware.

"She'll be okay," Knockout said. Again he smiled assurance, as he looked down at their powered down youngling. "She's damaged pretty badly... But she'll get better. And quickly too..." he rested a hand over his mate's free one, and smiled again. "Bots this young... you just can't keep them down, at least for for long..."

"I know..." Arcee smiled back just a little, thinking of more then one unfortunate youngling who she knew had simply done exactly that in circumstances so much worse. But she shook her head then sadly, trusting him but upset nonetheless.


End file.
